Is tight and yare and bravely rigged, as when
We first put out to sea.”
Tempest.
One by one the travellers crept down to the cabin. It was as uncomfortable as cabins usually are, perhaps more so, as being more lumbered and more crowded; and the ordinary space for locomotion had been miserably curtailed by a large supplementary table, which the steward was lashing athwart ship for the dinner accommodation of the supernumerary passengers. These were standing about here and there, as helpless and uncomfortable as people always are on first starting, and were regarding one another with looks of suspicion and distrust, as people who start by a public conveyance always do regard one another.
In this the English part of the community was prominently conspicuous. Denizens of a free land, it would seem as if they considered it as their bounden duty to be continually exhibiting their Magna Charta in the eyes of foreigners, and to maintain their just rights to the very death against all comers.
No rights, however, were invaded—there was no opportunity of asserting the Magna Charta; all were equally shy and equally miserable; till, by degrees, as the steamer crept slowly down the river against the tide, they shook into their places, and the ladies began to smile, and the ladies’ maids to look gracious.
The Parson was an old stager. Knowing full well the value of light and air in the present crowded state of the cabin, he had very willingly assented to the apologetic invitation of the steward, and had established himself comfortably enough on the transom itself, upon which was spread for his accommodation a horsehair mattress. There was no great deal to spare in the height of his domicile, for it was as much as he could conveniently manage to sit upright in it; but it was, at all events, retired, airy, and not subject to be suddenly evacuated by its occupant under the overpowering influence of a lee lurch or a weather roll.
Totally disregarding the bustle and confusion in the cabin below him, he was occupied in arranging and beautifying his temporary home. The sill of one window formed his travelling library, the books of which he had been unpacking from his stores, and securing by a piece of spun yarn from the disagreeable consequences of any sudden send of the ship in a rolling sea. The next formed his toilet-table and workshop, exhibiting his reels and fly-books, and the huge and well-known “material book,” the replenishing of which had occupied so much of his attention. The third was left empty, so as to be opened and shut at pleasure.
Stretched on his mattress, with a guide-book in his hand, and the map of Norway and Sweden at his side, he looked from his high abode on the turmoil of the cabin deck, with all the calmness and complacency with which the gods of the Epicureans are said to regard the troubles and distresses of mortals below.
And thus wore on the day. Dinner, tea, had been discussed—some little portion of constraint and shyness had been rubbed off—small knots of men were formed here and there, discussing nothings and making conversation. Night sank down upon the steamer as she ploughed her way across the Nore, and the last of the talkers rolled himself up in his bedclothes, and tried, though for a long while in vain, to accustom himself to public sleeping.