“Oh! bid them beware of ships that go from London to the Indies,
Else they’ll be caught, and their feathers plucked to show which way the wind is.”
By far the most graceful of the many other species of sea-birds that were continually hovering about the ship were the stormy petrel, or, as the superstitious sailors call them, “Mother Carey’s Chickens.” Their wonderfully rapid flight, now in the hollow between two waves, anon on the foaming crest of another, really looks more like walking on the water; and I understand that petrel is only a corruption of Peter. Among the sailors they have a bad reputation, and are regarded as birds of ill omen, a superstition which, on the principle of “give a dog a bad name,” &c., has clung to them, but which is in reality quite undeserved. Ignorance and tradition have, in fact, placed the cart before the horse: the stormy petrel follows storms, but cannot possibly foretell them.
By a modification of my albatross line, I managed to capture several of them; a proceeding, however, which had to be conducted with great secrecy; as, had the sailors got wind of it, and a storm followed by coincidence, I should probably have figured as the hero in a repetition of Jonah’s history—minus the “great fish”; and I am by no means sure whether even that important detail would have been wanting.
About this time we fell in with an emigrant ship; signals were exchanged under Marriott’s Code, and it was intimated that the presence of our captain was wanted on board. Both ships accordingly hove to; and in a weak moment of impulse I sought permission to occupy a place in the captain’s gig. The request was readily acceded to, and, if confession be at all desirable, I am quite prepared to confess to a slight degree of nervousness, as the small craft rose and fell in the most frolicsome manner, as if indeed she were glad to feel herself once more in the water. All sorts of horrible fancies coursed through my mind: what if the wind suddenly shifted, causing those flapping sails to belly out and carry both the ships farther away! We were hundreds of miles from land, and we had not so much as a biscuit or a drop of fresh water in the gig. Then I reviewed mentally all the terrible stages—casting lots, glaring at each other, &c., &c., and—we were alongside. The captain disappeared below, but I of course stayed on deck talking to the emigrants. How brave and sanguine they were; how little they seemed to heed the dreary prospect of a far-off country full of privations, where all would be up-hill work for many a long year. They saw Hope pointing to the bright to-morrow, to fields ripe with golden corn, the fruit of their labour, and homesteads made glad with the merry laughter of children. I wonder how many realized the vision! They crowded on deck, and their “Cheer, boys, cheer,” gradually waxed fainter and fainter as we neared our own ship.
When standing once more amongst my fellow-passengers, who plied me with all manner of questions, my thoughts reverted to those brave emigrants, and I dwelt with almost selfish complacency on the great difference between their prospects and our own.
Most of us were going out in the employ of a Company that reputedly paid its servants handsomely, and treated them kindly; we were to be enrolled as units in an administration never equalled in the world’s history: where all grades performed their duty con amore, and where officers were happy and contented, knit together by ties of brotherhood.
I will not sigh for the old order of things: it would be unseemly in one who has served under the new; but one cannot help remarking that it was the Mutiny which swept away the old peaceful era, substituting one of an opposite nature both in the European and the native elements. The Company gauged and respected the prejudices of the community over which it ruled; and, if it was not exactly loved, it was at least respected.
Now, however, Western ideas and Western methods of thought have, in spite of protest, been forced upon the aborigines. Up to the end of 1858-9 their respect for us was as sincere as could be expected from the people of a conquered country; but since that time the gulf has gradually widened, till, if another Mutiny were to break out, the whole of the population would be against us, instead of, as on the former occasion, for us. Under the cloak of giving them a quid pro quo for all the incalculable benefits which they have, however involuntarily, bestowed upon us, we continually force ourselves into places which they hold most sacred, and add insult to injury by endeavouring to propitiate them with dolls and other refuse of our fancy bazaars!
As to the Mutiny, the exciting cause was undoubtedly the manner in which home influence and interference undermined the discipline of the army: the annexation of Oude and the episode of the greased cartridges were but handles to lay hold of. But of this more anon.