Shortly before eleven the vessel hauled out of dock. There was much noise of yelling and swearing at this time; my sight and hearing were confounded, and I wondered that any mortal being should understand the exact thing to do in such a scene of clamorous distraction. People on the pier-heads shrieked farewells to those on board, and those on board sobbed and yelped in response. When we had floated over the cill, with the mud pilot on the forecastle almost apoplectic with unavailing wrath at some insult fired at him out of a hurricane lung on the wharf, a tug got hold of us, a couple of seamen lurched aft to the wheel, the hawser tautened, and away we went down the river in the fizzing wake of a pair of churning paddles.
The varied scenery of the Thames—I mean its maritime details of craft of twenty different rigs and steamers of twenty different aspects thrusting up and down, some staggering athwart, others making a bee-line through the reaches—charmed and interested me who was fresh from a long spell of inland, almost rural, life, and I lingered till I was driven below by the wet which came sweeping along in a succession of drenching squalls as we rounded out of Galleon’s into Barking Reach. I spent the remainder of that day in putting my cabin to rights, examining the drugs (some of which, for antiquity, methought, might have gone round the world with Cook in his first voyage), and in providing for my own comfort as best I could, and at half-past six went into the cuddy to join the people at dinner, by which hour the ship had arrived at a mooring-buoy off Gravesend, and was lying motionless on her own shadow in the stream.
It was a sullen evening, already dark; and dirty blowing wet weather on deck. The muffled howling and hissing of the wind in the three towering spires of mast, and yard, and rigging communicated, I’ve no doubt, the particular brilliance and beauty I found in the appearance of the well-lighted cuddy, with its long table draped for dinner, sparkling with glass and plate, and a number of ladies and gentlemen, along with the captain and chief officer, issuing from their respective berths to take their seats. Thirteen of us sat down, and when this was remarked by an elderly lady next the captain, a midshipman was sent for to neutralize the sinister influence of that number by making a fourteenth. The lad took his place with a countenance of happy astonishment. He heartily wished, I dare say, that thirteen people would sit down to dinner every day.
I understood that there were some eight or ten more passengers expected from Gravesend in the morning. I looked about me to see what sort of persons I was to be associated with on an ocean passage that might run into four months. No need in this brief record of a tragic event to enter into minute descriptions of the people: enough if I refer now to two persons who sat opposite me, both of whom were to prove leading actors in what I have to tell.
One of them was a man of about six-and-thirty years of age. He wore a heavy moustache slightly streaked with grey. His eyes were dark, keen, and steadfast in their gaze—steadfast, indeed, to rudeness, for his manner of looking at you was scarcely less than a deliberate scrutinizing stare. His hair was thin on the top, bushy at the sides; his complexion dark as of one who has lived long under the sun. His voice was subdued, his whole bearing well bred.
His companion was a lady: a dark, very handsome woman of three or four and twenty. Her hair was black, without gloss, a soft, dark, rich black, and I never before saw a woman with so wonderful a thickness of hair as that girl had. Her large, fine, dark eyes had a tropic sparkle; there was foreign blood in the glances which flashed through the long lashes. Her complexion was a most delicate olive made tender by a soft lasting bloom, which rested like a lingering blush upon her cheeks. Her figure looked faultless, and doubtless was so. I put the man down as a happy fellow carrying a beautiful bride away with him to the Antipodes. You could not have doubted that they were newly married; his behaviour was all fondness; hers that of the impassioned young wife who finds difficulty in concealing her adoration in public.
I have thus sketched them, but I own that I was not more particularly interested in the couple than in others of the people who sat on either hand. The chief mate of the ship, however, Mr. Small, who occupied a seat on my left, concluded that my interest was sufficiently keen to justify him in talking to me about them; and in a low voice he told me that they were Captain and Mrs. Norton-Savage; he didn’t quite know what he was captain of, but he had gathered from some source he couldn’t recollect that he had made a fortune in South America, in Lima or Callao, and had been married a few weeks only, and was going to live in Australia, as his wife’s health was not good, and the doctors believed the Australian climate would suit her.
Early next morning the rest of the passengers came on board, the tug again took us in tow, and under a dark blue sky, mountainous with masses of white cloud, the Chiliman floated in tow of the tug into Channel waters, where a long flowing heave despatched a great number of us to our cabins.
We met with nothing but head winds and chopping seas down Channel. The ship lurched and sprang consumedly, and the straining noises of bulkheads and strong fastenings were so swift and furious in that part of the vessel where I slept that I’d sometimes think the fabric was going to pieces at my end of her. I was very sea-sick, but happily my services were never required in that time.