On reaching Port Elizabeth, that enterprising city of Cape Colony, Dr Fox proceeded immediately to the long jetty, built well out into the sea, and there boarded a tug that lay alongside, and was soon steaming out to the “Arab,” riding at anchor in Algoa Bay.
Many passengers were aboard, a number having come from Natal, and their faces expressed satisfaction at the prospect of a visit home to England.
Soon the heart of the great “Arab” began to beat, and the pulsations could be heard and felt by the passengers sitting on its deck watching the sunlight reflected on the wooded shores of the African coast, that seemed to glide by, while the “Arab” stood still.
A few days at sea seems a very long time, and social reserve drops off with the taking of the log. The seats arranged at table, the constant personal association in the confines of the ship, together with the hundred of incidents that arise during a long voyage, soon reveal the characters of fellow passengers. If there is congeniality the voyage comes to an end almost too soon.
There is no life that can tell of its romances and its heart-burnings like the life at sea.
A man’s soul must be living indeed in a cold atmosphere, that can be so gently rocked in such a richly carved and gilded cradle as one of those Southern steamers, and not find sentiment growing in his soul. Especially if he is fortunate to meet there what may appear to be an affinity.
On reaching Cape Town the following day, and entering the stone dock, the doctor disembarked to pay a flying visit to the Eden-like suburbs, where the houses, covered with passion-flowers, growing in wild profusion and surrounded by orchids, peep out, overlooking the beautiful waters of Table Bay. With the mauve-tinted, golden-rimmed mountains lying in the distance, it is a veritable paradise in which to hide one’s self away from the world.
Taking a hansom and returning to the steamer, the doctor stood on deck watching the sailors depositing the luggage in the hold, and thinking what that voyage might mean in the lives of many of the passengers.
As this thought sprang up, he looked toward the dock, and saw three persons in tourist garb, hastily approaching the gangplank, then in course of being hauled on deck.
Their faces were familiar. They were Donald and Dainty Laure, with Herr Schwatka, and they came hastily on board, and disappeared in the deck cabins allotted to them.