“I'll fret her,” roared the farmer, lifting his whip exactly as if it was a sword, and a cut to be made at a dragoon's helmet. “I'll cut her liver out.”
“No, ye shan't,” said George. “Poor thing, she is thinking of her corn at the Queen's Head in Newborough. She isn't going across the sea—let her go, I've taken my last look and said my last word;” and he covered up his face.
Farmer Dodd drove on in silence, except that every now and then he gave an audible snivel, and whenever this occurred he always accommodated the mare with a smart cut—reasonable!
At Newborough they found Mr. Winchester. He drove George to the rail, and that night they slept on board the Phoenix emigrant ship. Here they found three hundred men and women in a ship where there was room for two hundred and fifty, accommodation for eighty.
Next morning, “Farmer,” said Mr. Winchester gayly, “we have four hours before we sail—some of these poor people will suffer great hardships between this and Sydney; suppose you and I go and buy a lot of blankets, brawn, needles, canvas, greatcoats, felt, American beef, solidified milk, Macintoshes, high-lows and thimbles. That will rouse us up a little.”
“Thank you, sir, kindly.”
Out they went into the Ratcliffe Highway, and chaffered with some of the greatest rascals in trade. The difference between what they asked and what they took made George stare. Their little cabin was crowded with goods, only just room left for the aristocrat, the farmer and Carlo. And now the hour came. Poor George was roused from his lethargy by the noise and bustle; and oh, the creaking of cables sickened his heart. Then the steamer came up and took them in tow, and these our countrymen and women were pulled away from their native land too little and too full to hold us all. It was a sad sight, saddest to those whose own flesh and blood was on the shore and saw the steamer pull them away; bitterest to those who had no friend to watch them go.
How they clung to England! they stretched out their hands to her, and when they could hold to her no other way they waved their hats and their handkerchiefs to their countrymen, who waved to them from shore—and so they spun out a little longer the slender chain that visibly bound them to her. And at this moment even the iron-hearted and the reckless were soft and sad. Our hearts' roots lie in the soil we have grown on.
No wonder then George Fielding leaned over the ship-side benumbed with sorrow, and counted each foot of water as it glided by, and thought “Now I am so much farther from Susan.”
For a wonder he was not sea-sick, but his appetite was gone from a nobler cause; he could hardly be persuaded to eat at all for many days.