"Oh," said he, "we shall send you both up in a chair with a whip. There's the block," he added, pointing to the yard-arm, "and the line's already rove, you'll observe."
There were some seventy or eighty people watching us as we drew alongside, all staring over the rail and from the forecastle and from the poop, as one man. I remarked a few bonnets and shawled heads forward, and two or three well-dressed women aft, otherwise the crowd of heads belonged to men-emigrants—shabby and grimy; most of them looking seasick, I thought, as they overhung the side.
A line was thrown from the ship, and the boat was hauled under the yard-arm whip, where she lay rising and falling, carefully fended off from the vessel's iron side by a couple of the men in her.
"Now, then, bear a hand!" shouted a voice from the poop; "get your gangway unshipped, and stand by to hoist away handsomely."
A minute later a large chair with arms dangled over our heads, and was caught by the fellows in the boat. A more uncomfortable, nerve-capsizing performance I never took a part in. The water washed with a thunderous sobbing sound along the metal bends of the ship, that, as she stooped her side into the brine, flashed up the swell in froth, hurling towards us also a recoiling billow, which made the dance of the boat horribly bewildering and nauseating. One moment we were floated, as it seemed to my eye, to the level of the bulwarks of the stooping ship; the next we were in a valley, with the great bare hull leaning away from us—an immense wet surface of red and black and chequered band, her shrouds vanishing in a slope, and her yard-arms forking up sky high.
"Now, madam," said the second mate, "will you please seat yourself in that chair?"
Grace was very white, but she saw that it must be done, and with set lips and in silence, was helped by the sailors to seat herself. I adored her then for her spirit, for I confess that I had dreaded she would hang back, shriek out, cling to me, and complicate and delay the miserable business by her terrors. She was securely fastened into the chair, and the second mate paused for the chance.
"Hoist away!" he yelled, and up went my darling, uttering one little scream only as she soared.
"Lower away!" and by the line that was attached to the chair, she was dragged through the gangway where I lost sight of her.
It was now my turn. The chair descended, and I sat upon it, not without several yearning glances at the sloping side of the ship, which, however, only satisfied me that there was no other method by which I might enter the vessel than the chair, active as I was.