The condition of the Anne and her passengers was little to be envied. In the steerage, the provisions of the emigrants were nearly exhausted, and the allowance of execrable water was diminished to a pint a day per head. Famine already began to stare them in the face. They had been six weeks at sea, and the poorer emigrants had only provided necessaries for that period. The Captain was obliged to examine the stores which still remained, and to charge the people to make the most sparing use of them until they made land.
The improvident, by this time, were utterly destitute, and were fed by the Captain, who made them pay what little they could towards their support. This, Mr. Lootie told them, was an act of tyranny, for the Captain was bound to feed them, as long as he had a biscuit in the ship. Indeed, he lost no opportunity of fostering dissentions between Boreas and his people; and the difficult position in which the old sailor was placed was rendered doubly so, by the mischievous and false representations of this base-minded man.
The poor emigrants grew discontented, as their wants daily increased, and had no longer spirits to dance and enjoy themselves; yet some sort of excitement seemed absolutely necessary, to keep their minds from preying upon themselves and each other.
Now would have been the time for Mr. S——to have proved his Christian ministry, and tried by his advice, and the gentle application of that unerring balsam for all diseases of mind and body, the Word of God, to reconcile these poor people to their situation, and teach them to bear with fortitude the further trials to which they might be exposed. But at this critical period of the voyage, he kept aloof, and seldom made his appearance upon the deck, or if he did steal out for a constitutional promenade, he rarely exchanged a salutation with the passengers.
Not so Mr. Lootie. The little brown man had roused himself from his lair, and was all alive. He might constantly be seen near the forecastle, surrounded by a set of half-famished young fellows, enjoying a low species of gambling, well known to school-boys as "Pitch and Toss," "Chuck Farthing," and other equally elegant terms, quite worthy of the amusement.
There are some minds so base, that they only require a combination of circumstances, to show to what depths of meanness they can stoop. Mr. Lootie's was a mind of this class. He felt no remorse in replenishing his pockets from the scanty resources of these poor emigrants, joining in the lowest species of gambling in order to win their money, part of which, as a sort of excuse to himself, he expended in liquor, in order to reconcile his victims to their loss; for, with very few exceptions, he was always the winner.
Even the solitary sixpence, the sole fortune of the brothers Muckleroy, found its way into the pocket of the rapacious defaulter.
Flora watched these proceedings until she could control her indignation no longer, and accosting Mr. Lootie on deck, she remonstrated with him on his immoral and most ungentlemanly conduct. He replied, with a sneer, "They were fools. He had as much right to take advantage of their folly as another. Some one would win their money if he did not. The people were hungry and disappointed; they wanted amusement, and so did he; and he was not responsible to Mrs. Lyndsay, or any one else, for his conduct."
Flora appealed to his conscience.
The man had no conscience. It had been hardened and rendered callous long years ago, in the furnace of the world; and she turned from his coarse unfeeling face with sentiments of aversion and disgust.