So faded that “white-faced shore, whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tide”; and before the end of the year we were to look upon another of a very different complexion, low, swampy, and muddy; fringed with cocoanut trees, at the foot of which jackals shrieked, making night hideous, and around which mosquitoes buzzed and bit, as with the avowed mission of scaring away nature’s sweet restorer.
To the officers and crew all the bustle of getting under weigh was of course familiar; but to some fifty passengers, starting for the most part on their first voyage, it all seemed chaos: anon a stentorian voice gave an order, resulting in a tramping of feet and the thud of ropes falling on the deck, to the accompaniment of “Cheery, boys, oh!” or some other ditty that was prime favourite in those days.
Having made a fair offing, the good old ship bore steadily down channel, the pilot entering his boat somewhere off Start Point, and his “God speed!” seemed to sever the last link that bound us to the mother country.
Even in a comparatively calm sea the movement of an East Indiaman was sufficient to test one’s sea-going qualities, so that, when the bells had been struck for meals, the cuddy table presented numerous gaps, while certain ominous sounds proceeding from the direction of the private accommodation announced to the happy few the advent of that terrible ordeal mal-de-mer. Happily for the majority of mortals it soon wears itself out; and the stomach, conforming to the law that “use is second nature,” soon becomes tolerant of the new order of things, and ceases to resent the innovation of digesting under conditions of perpetual motion. I only came across one case in which sea-sickness became a source of positive danger. The sufferer, a hale and healthy man on coming aboard, was reduced in the course of a couple of months to a mere bag of bones. What medical aid failed to do was accomplished by nature; his sickness ceased, and in lieu thereof he acquired an insatiable appetite which distressed him. He apologized for the amount that he ate at meals, and for filling his pockets with biscuits afterwards; but he was powerless to restrain himself, so that by the time we arrived at our destination he was the counterpart of his original self. I never saw him again, but I imagine that, if he did ever return to Europe, his path lay through unexplored regions, as I believe he would have attempted to traverse them on foot rather than again enter a cabin.
Personally, I never experienced sea-sickness; the only influence that the motion of the ship had over me was that I fell asleep on the least provocation, which was very many times a day, as reading and writing were equally out of the question.
By the time the dreaded Bay of Biscay had been crossed, and the ship had entered warmer latitudes, the deck presented a more animated appearance, and the cuddy table became devoid of gaps. All sorts and conditions of both sexes had now acquired their sea-legs, and their sea-stomachs too; for the most part they ate, I am convinced, more than was good for them. Sea-air enjoys the reputation of stimulating the appetite, and it undoubtedly had that effect in this particular instance, assisted, maybe, by the seductive variety presented at each meal. It was surprising, indeed, how such a number could be so catered for day after day, extending to the third part of a year: mutton, pork, fowls, ducks, and geese were always forthcoming, to say nothing of the ubiquitous ham; nor was there any falling off in fresh bread and pastry, while the cows in the long boat kept up the supply of milk. After each meal the water astern became dotted with empty bottles—for passengers, who could have as much ale, &c., as they pleased, did please—which, as they sank to great depths, were probably shivered into fragments ere they reached the bottom by the increasing pressure. Supposing, indeed, the waters had dried up, the Cape route to India could, I doubt not, have been easily traced by these innumerable fragments of glass. The captious critic, commenting on what we had done for that vast continent extending from the Himalayas to Cape Cormorin, was wont to remark that, had the Mutiny been successful, empty bottles alone would have remained as monuments of a century’s dominion. Thus we should have had the same memorial from Spithead to the Hooghly, and might have figured as a nation in whose administration glass figured as an important ingredient, the captious one ignoring in all probability such insignificant achievements as the Grand Trunk Road, and suppression of Infanticide, Thuggee, and Suttee.
The only article on which any restriction was placed was the fresh water allotted for the purpose of ablution, more than a given quantity being obtainable only under peculiar conditions. But temptation, like slander, “rides on the posting winds, and doth belie all corners of the earth,” and even old East-Indiaman stewards were hardly above its subtle influence.
Unrestricted access, then, to everything save fresh water, was the old order of things; and the P. and O., besides having kept abreast of the requirements of the present day in the matter of shipbuilding, speed, and comfort, deserve more credit than they actually got for being the pioneers of so admirable an innovation as lowering the passage-money, and charging extra for wine, beer, and aërated waters.
Many of my contemporary travellers will remember how from start to finish of a voyage the table was crowded at breakfast, lunch, and dinner with bottles containing various wines; in addition to which there were frequent descents to the cuddy to slake an imaginary thirst with a B. and S. This inordinate and imaginary thirst died a natural death under the new system of paying for what is ordered. A bottle of claret on the breakfast table became the exception rather than the rule: few made it “eight bells” to any extent, and the pop of soda-water bottles became very rare.
From the suspicious way in which we English approach each other, whether in a private room or in a public conveyance, it would seem as if there lurked in our composition some of that cautious mistrust so characteristic of the wild beast. But after having been a week or so in each other’s company, the passengers positively began to thaw towards one another; a welcome change that was, however, succeeded by a still harder frost. For a time, indeed, we constituted a happy family, dancing, singing, and acting together; but this temporary and unstable fusion of minds was doomed to resolve itself into two antagonistic elements, an untoward state of affairs that culminated only as the good ship drew near her destination. There were two ways of accounting for this division in the camp; my own view of the matter was that we saw too much of each other from “rosy morn till dewy eve,” which, besides breeding contempt, gave birth to that “green-eyed monster,” jealousy. But the sailors ascribed all that went wrong to the presence of so many clergymen, whom they looked upon as the fons et origo of storms and everything undesirable. It is, however, a melancholy yet undeniable fact that a number of human beings herded together for any considerable length of time will be sure to fall out, behaving in all probability rather less charitably than so many tigers and jackals.