“Say rather, madam, since we passed Beachy Head, and you went below,” he replied. (Was it not neatly put, Amelia?) “The worst point in my situation was that I could do nothing to please. When during the rough weather I offered my services to help in cutting away the wreck, or otherwise endeavoured to make myself of use, I was bid by the mate there not to thrust my nose in where I was not wanted, while if I stood back, I was cursed for a lazy lubber and a long-legged Scotch loon, with many other insulting terms.”
“I marvel, sir, that you was able to leave such rudeness unresented,” I could not help saying, remembering Mr Fraser’s readiness to take offence at a word while we were at the inn. His face reddened somewhat.
“I owe my meekness to you, madam. Every captain has supreme authority on his own ship, but I fear that even that reflection would not have restrained me had I not remembered that if I gave Mr Wallis occasion to put me in irons as a mutineer, which he had gladly done, I would have little hope of being of any service to you afterwards.”
“Indeed, sir,” I said, “I’m happy to have been of use to you.”
At this point the steward came to announce that dinner was served, and Mr Fraser asked if he might attend me to the cuddy.[03] But this I refused, both because I had no desire to be the only lady at table, and because I felt little inclination for food, and remaining where I was, I dined sumptuously on some broth and toasted bread which the Lieutenant was so obliging as to bring me. I stayed on deck during the greater part of the afternoon, and the next day Miss Hamlin joined me, on receiving assurances that Mr Ranger would count it an honour to hold himself at her service. Since then there has been but one day when we were forced by rough weather to remain below, and even Mrs Hamlin and the other ladies are now sufficiently recovered to come on deck. As for the rest of the gentlemen, they nearly all made their appearance the day after Mr Ranger, and have done their best to prove themselves an agreeable set of fellows. The weather is grown continually hotter. Miss Hamlin and I were not long in exchanging our capuchins for beaver bonnets and short cloaks, but to-day we have taken to wearing gipsy hats and India scarves, though it is mid-winter! But when we reach Bengall, so Mrs Hamlin says, we shall find that none of the ladies wear either hats or hoods when they ride abroad, but only lace caps trimmed with ribbons and flowers, as we do in the evening, and that one don’t need so much as to throw a handkerchief over one’s shoulders out of doors. Sure either the heat must be far greater than we can imagine, or the constitution of these ladies must be extremely hardy.
While I pen these lines to my Amelia, our ship is lying in the Bay of Fonchial, in the Madeiras, where we remain for a week to take in water and fresh provisions, and also to give us poor passengers an opportunity of remembering that there is such a blessed thing as firm ground. Each morning we visit the land in a boat from the shore, which is constructed, so Mr Fraser informs me, in a special manner on account of the force of the waves, and ride up the beach in the oddest fashion. What do you say to a frame of boards, like the sledges of which we read in Sweden and Poland, and drawn by oxen? Two or three of the gentlemen (you’ll guess that the Lieutenant is one) refuse to ride in this machine, as a slight to their dignity, and prefer to crawl up the beach in the stifling heat. Arrived in the town, which has many very genteel houses, we spend some time on the Parade, which is here called the Praza. To me it recalls memories of the time I spent with my Amelia at Tunbridge Wells, but the trees here are orange-trees, and the company, though very polite, is nothing near so elegant as that we used to watch. Later in the day the gentlemen devise some party of pleasure, to which they invite the ladies, generally in some garden near the town, where the time passes agreeably enough, and we return to the Orford by moonlight.
Yesterday we visited a certain convent, which is considered (why, I don’t know) to be one of the sights of the place. The appearance of the nuns, who are nearly all ladies of a discreet age, was vastly disappointing to the gentlemen, and Mr Ranger declared roundly that they had certainly immured themselves from necessity rather than choice. These religious persons occupy their leisure in making small articles, such as cockades and sword-knots, of silk and gold thread, which they are permitted to sell to visitors, passing them through the double grating by means of a cleft stick. Among these toys was a handsome fan-girdle, which I coveted for my Amelia, very neatly made with tassels, but my purse refused to allow me the pleasure of purchasing it. I had contented myself with a plainer sort, which I handed to Mr Fraser to carry for me, but when we sat down under the trees on the Parade to look over our purchases, what was my surprise when he presented me with the girdle I had first admired! Assuring the Lieutenant that there was some mistake, he told me that ’twas not so, but he had made bold to secure for me the article I desired. ’Twas a civil thought, was it not? and I could have found it in my heart to wish it were possible to accept the poor man’s courtesy, but I desired him very seriously to restore me my own property. He was very highly offended, but I persisted in my demand, with which at last he complied, though with an excessively bad grace. The plain girdle I am sending to my dearest friend with this letter. I could wish it had been t’other, but I know my Amelia Turnor will prefer a smaller gift to a greater purchased at the sacrifice of her Sylvia’s punctilio.
At Mynheer Brouncker’s House, Cape Town, April ye 8th, 1755.
Behold me now, my dear, with the half part of my journey passed, spending with delight a few days on shore in Holland—yet at the furthest extremity of the African continent. This is a sweet pretty place, the houses flat-roofed, and painted white or some bright colour, and the streets prodigiously regular and crossing one another at right angles with the most surprising neatness, and in the middle of the town a fine handsome square. Along each street are planted rows of trees, vastly symmetrical, and beside them are water-courses or small canals fed from springs, which are very agreeable for their coolness. This house (belonging to a private person who, like most of the better sort here, is glad to lodge and board us English for a rix-dollar a-day apiece, so that the sight of a British vessel entering the harbour is hailed with the most extravagant demonstrations of joy), though not what we in England should count luxurious, is almost incredible in its cleanliness, all the chamber-maids and servants being blacks. These people are called Hottentots, and the Dutch boors, which seems not to be understood here as a term of contempt. Our windows command a charming prospect of the great mountain overlooking the town, which from its flatness is called the Table. At times one sees the clouds descend and spread themselves upon its summit, and this, Mr Fraser tells me, is called by seamen, “the devil laying his table-cloth.” Seamen are droll creatures, en’t they, Amelia? And this reminds me to say that Messieurs Fraser and Ranger, with several other gentlemen from the Orford, are lodged in the same house as ourselves.
But you’ll demand some account of our voyage since I last put pen to paper in the Madeiras. Alas, my Amelia, your Sylvia is a sad lazy girl! And yet, how could it engage your interest to hear that for so many days we lay becalmed off the coasts of Guinea, and at other times met baffling winds that threw us out of our course, and on a very few occasions found ourselves making good progress with the aid of a favouring breeze? or that we touched at Ascension Island, and waited there while the seamen catched twenty great turtles for us to take on board—horrid sprawling creatures, and their fat green when it is cooked? But all these delays, you’ll say, afforded me only the more time for writing to you. True, my dear, but what should be the subject? My beloved girl knows that I love her, and to waste paper in repeating assurances of that would be to outdo even a lover’s folly. When the history of one day is told, you have ’em all. Know then that the mornings have been spent seated under the awning on deck, we ladies with our embroidery at hand, to give us a decent semblance of industry, but really occupied in watching for distant sails, or the sight of land, or flying-fishes, or a change of wind, or any of the important nothings that appear of so much moment to the traveller on board ship. The gentlemen, meanwhile, busy themselves in fishing for creatures with such odd names as albacores, bonitoes, and doradoes, catching the smaller ones with hooks and lines, and the larger with fish-gigs or harpoons, in the casting of which Mr Fraser is particularly skilful. There are also many birds which venture near enough to the vessel to be caught, as albatrosses (but these the seamen protect, through some sentiment of superstition), tropic-birds, which are about the size of a hawk, with one extravagantly long feather in the tail, and booties and noddies, whose names (so Mr Fraser says, but I’m sure I can’t see how) express their natural foolishness. The afternoon is passed like the morning, unless one of the gentlemen be so obliging as to deprive himself of the excitement of fishing in order to read aloud to us females as we work. Then comes the evening, when there’s really nothing in the world to do (owing to the dimness of the lights provided for us below), but remain on deck and watch the sea, which indeed shows the strangest and most extraordinary fiery ripples and waves, unless the captain think fit to call up one of the seamen that plays the fiddle, and bid us set to for a dance. But this is rarely more than once a-week, and we call such occasions our assembly nights, when we dress ourselves with more attention than at other times, and the gentlemen wear their wigs, or have their hair curled and powdered.