“You are involved in a great difficulty, I fear,” continued his friend, “for, in the first place, the time at your disposal is not long; you cannot ask for the number of her berth, not having her name, and there is little probability of your being able to see every individual in a vessel like this while they keep moving about on deck and below.”
The captain admitted that the difficulties were great and his countenance grew longer, for, being as we have said a remarkably sympathetic man, the emotions of his heart were quickly telegraphed to his features.
“It strikes me,” continued the missionary, in a comforting tone, “that your best chance of success will be to enter my service for the occasion, and go about with me distributing New Testaments and tracts. You will thus, as it were, have a reason for going actively about looking into people’s faces, and even into their berths. Excuse me for asking—what do you think of doing if you find your sister, for the vessel starts in a few hours?”
“Oh, I’ll get her—and—and her husband to give up the voyage and return ashore with me. I’m well enough off to make it worth their while.”
The missionary did not appear to think the plan very hopeful, but as they ran alongside at the moment them was no time for reply.
It was indeed a bewildering scene to which they were introduced on reaching the deck. The confusion of parting friends; of pushing porters with trunks and boxes; perplexed individuals searching for lost luggage; distracted creatures looking for lost relatives; calm yet energetic officers in merchant-service uniform moving about giving directions; active seamen pushing through the crowds in obedience to orders; children of all sizes playing and getting in people’s way; infants of many kinds yelling hideously or uttering squalls of final despair. There was pathos and comicality too, intermingled. Behold, on one side, an urchin sitting astonished—up to his armpits in a bandbox through which he has just crashed—and an irate parent trying to drag him out; while, on your other side, stands a grief-stricken mother trying to say farewell to a son whose hollow cheeks, glittering eyes, and short cough give little hope of a meeting again on this side the grave. Above all the din, as if to render things more maddening, the tug alongside keeps up intermittent shrieks of its steam-whistle, for the first bell has rung to warn those who are not passengers to prepare for quitting the steamer. Soon the second bell rings, and the bustle increases while in the excitement of partings the last farewells culminate.
“We don’t need to mind that bell, having our boat alongside,” said the missionary to Captain Bream, as they stood a little to one side silently contemplating the scene. “You see that smart young officer in uniform, close to the cabin skylight?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the captain.”
“Indeed. He seems to me very young to have charge of such a vessel.”