After this recitation some one tries to play on the piano. In the middle of the piece the ship gives an obliging lurch, but to no purpose; for, though the performer slips off the stool, striking with his hands something that sounds like the lost chord, and with his body two ladies who are waiting for their turn, he is picked up and put back on the stool to finish.
When he has done so, his rescuers spring blithely forward, one playing the accompaniment very badly while the other renders "Araby." "Araby" is always sung at a ship's concert. Likewise a young Englishman invariably sings "The Powder Monkey."
The English have peculiar views on singing. Mere matters of voice and ear make not the slightest difference to them. It is like going to war, or playing on the flute: one can't refuse, I mean to say, if one is asked. Eh, what? The only man in England who has a right to say he cannot sing is one who is literally dumb, and as he cannot say it, it is never said. And so, you see, Britannia Rules the Wave, and all that sort of thing.
At the end of the concert, "God Save the King" strikes up, and everybody rises and lifts such voice as he has in song, the American passengers labouring under a conviction that the words begin "My country, 'tis of thee," until the Britons drown them out.
But we have our turn, for "The Star-Spangled Banner" is played immediately after. The words of this excellent song (as Mr. Rupert Hughes has pointed out) begin with something of this sort:
Oh say, can you see by the dawn's early light
How the la ta-ta ta, and the ta-ta ta tum-tum.
So we proceed until we reach the spirited "ba-a-an-ner ye-et wa-ave," and the shrieking climax of "the la-and—of—the—free-e-e-e!" The object of the game is not to let the British find out that we don't know the words.
On German ships, particularly those in the Mediterranean service, the gay occasion of the voyage will be the Captain's Dinner, a function which doubtless draws its name from the fact that the captain is invariably absent from the table. But if the captain doesn't come, everybody else does, and there is more dress than usual, and there are lights inside the ices. After dinner, the deck is illuminated with coloured electric bulbs, the band plays, and the people "trip the light fantastic toe," as country papers put it. On German liners it's not always light, but it is frequently fantastic.
There are two great events that occur on this occasion. Some young men from the section which is the backbone of our country—if not it's fashion centre—appear on deck in dinner-coats and derby hats. They have read somewhere a fashion note stating that "the derby or bowler hat is the one headpiece de rigueur with the Tuxedo or dinner suit," and they mean to be comme il faut upon their trip abroad, or "bust." The other great event is the ship's belle in her pink chiffon. It makes you almost wish you were a dancing-man, to see her. But there are dancing-men enough—among them the ship's doctor. He leads her in the mazes of the waltz and, while dancing, is given an anæsthetic, in shape of a languishing glance or two. Before he comes to, his partner has performed a minor operation on him—the amputation of a button.