The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  sliding away by itself, and all pounding the weakest sect which

  slid first into the corner. Utmost point of dissent soon attained

  in every corner, and violent rolling. Stewards at length make a

  dash; conduct minister to the mast in the centre of the saloon,

  which he embraces with both arms; skate out; and leave him in that

  condition to arrange affairs with flock.

  There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read the

  service. It was quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the

  dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experiment of striking up a

  hymn. After it was given out, we all rose, but everybody left it

  to somebody else to begin. Silence resulting, the officer (no

  singer himself) rather reproachfully gave us the first line again,

  upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentleman, remarkable throughout

  the passage for his cheerful politeness, gave a little stamp with

  his boot (as if he were leading off a country dance), and blithely

  warbled us into a show of joining. At the end of the first verse

  we became, through these tactics, so much refreshed and encouraged,

  that none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit to be left out

  of the second verse; while as to the third we lifted up our voices

  in a sacred howl that left it doubtful whether we were the more

  boastful of the sentiments we united in professing, or of

  professing them with a most discordant defiance of time and tune.

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  'Lord bless us!' thought I, when the fresh remembrance of these

  things made me laugh heartily alone in the dead water-gurgling

  waste of the night, what time I was wedged into my berth by a

  wooden bar, or I must have rolled out of it, 'what errand was I

  then upon, and to what Abyssinian point had public events then

  marched? No matter as to me. And as to them, if the wonderful

  popular rage for a plaything (utterly confounding in its

  inscrutable unreason) I had not then lighted on a poor young savage

  boy, and a poor old screw of a horse, and hauled the first off by

  the hair of his princely head to "inspect" the British volunteers,

  and hauled the second off by the hair of his equine tail to the

  Crystal Palace, why so much the better for all of us outside

  Bedlam!'

  So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking myself

  would I like to show the grog distribution in 'the fiddle' at noon

  to the Grand United Amalgamated Total Abstinence Society? Yes, I

  think I should. I think it would do them good to smell the rum,

  under the circumstances. Over the grog, mixed in a bucket,

  presides the boatswain's mate, small tin can in hand. Enter the

  crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of Giant Despair, in

  contradistinction to the band of youthful angel Hope. Some in

  boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls, some in

  frocks, some in pea-coats, a very few in jackets, most with

  sou'wester hats, all with something rough and rugged round the

  throat; all, dripping salt water where they stand; all pelted by

  weather, besmeared with grease, and blackened by the sooty rigging.

  Each man's knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for dinner.

  As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches the filling

  of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to be

  prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses the contents into

  himself, and passes the empty chalice and passes on, so the second

  man with an anticipatory wipe of his mouth on sleeve or

  handkerchief, bides his turn, and drinks and hands and passes on,

  in whom, and in each as his turn approaches, beams a knowingly

  kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenly awakened tendency to

  be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I even observe that the man

  in charge of the ship's lamps, who in right of his office has a

  double allowance of poisoned chalices, seems thereby vastly

  degraded, even though he empties the chalices into himself, one

  after the other, much as if he were delivering their contents at

  some absorbent establishment in which he had no personal interest.

  But vastly comforted, I note them all to be, on deck presently,

  even to the circulation of redder blood in their cold blue

  knuckles; and when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and

  holding on for life among the beating sails, I cannot for MY life

  see the justice of visiting on them - or on me - the drunken crimes

  of any number of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes.

  Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, and recalled

  life on board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay, part of that

  day, in the Bay of New York, O! The regular life began - mine

  always did, for I never got to sleep afterwards - with the rigging

  of the pump while it was yet dark, and washing down of decks. Any

  enormous giant at a prodigious hydropathic establishment,

  conscientiously undergoing the water-cure in all its departments,

  and extremely particular about cleaning his teeth, would make those

  noises. Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash,

  splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash, splash, bubble, rub. Then the

  day would break, and, descending from my berth by a graceful ladder

  composed of half-opened drawers beneath it, I would reopen my outer

  dead-light and my inner sliding window (closed by a watchman during

  the water-cure), and would look out at the long-rolling, lead-

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  coloured, white topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter

  morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through which the ship

  fought her melancholy way at a terrific rate. And now, lying down

  again, awaiting the season for broiled ham and tea, I would be

  compelled to listen to the voice of conscience, - the screw.

  It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of stomach; but

  I called it in my fancy by the higher name. Because it seemed to

  me that we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring to stifle the

  voice. Because it was under everybody's pillow, everybody's plate,

  everybody's camp-stool, everybody's book, everybody's occupation.

  Because we pretended not to hear it, especially at meal-times,

  evening whist, and morning conversation on deck; but it was always

  among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned in pea-soup, not

  to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to be

  knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away from. It was

  smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail;

  it was conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in

  their wrappers until the stars shone; it waited at table with the

  stewards; nobody could put it out with the lights. It was

  considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the voice of

  conscience. It was not polite to mention it. One squally day an

  amiable gentleman in love gave much offence to a surrounding

  circle, including the object of his attachment, by saying of it,

  after it had goaded
him over two easy-chairs and a skylight,

  'Screw!'

  Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting moments, when

  bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there was 'hot pot'

  in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we had had regularly every

  day was described in that official document by a new name, - under

  such excitements, one would almost believe it hushed. The ceremony

  of washing plates on deck, performed after every meal by a circle

  as of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep

  it down. Hauling the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting the

  twenty-four hours' run, altering the ship's time by the meridian,

  casting the waste food overboard, and attracting the eager gulls

  that followed in our wake, - these events would suppress it for a

  while. But the instant any break or pause took place in any such

  diversion, the voice would be at it again, importuning us to the

  last extent. A newly married young pair, who walked the deck

  affectionately some twenty miles per day, would, in the full flush

  of their exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and stand

  trembling, but otherwise immovable, under its reproaches.

  When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when the

  time approached for our retiring to our dens for the night; when

  the lighted candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer; when the

  deserted glasses with spoons in them grew more and more numerous;

  when waifs of toasted cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter

  slid languidly to and fro in the table-racks; when the man who

  always read had shut up his book, and blown out his candle; when

  the man who always talked had ceased from troubling; when the man

  who was always medically reported as going to have delirium tremens

  had put it off till to-morrow; when the man who every night devoted

  himself to a midnight smoke on deck two hours in length, and who

  every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards, was buttoning

  himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil: for then, as we

  fell off one by one, and, entering our several hutches, came into a

  peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the voice

  would shake us to the centre. Woe to us when we sat down on our

  sofa, watching the swinging candle for ever trying and retrying to

  stand upon his head! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we

  appeared in our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizontally

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  from the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more facile towels!

  Then would the voice especially claim us for its prey, and rend us

  all to pieces.

  Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the voice grows

  angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and under the pillow, under

  the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the ship and under the

  sea, seeming to rise from the foundations under the earth with

  every scoop of the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so?), always

  the voice. Vain to deny its existence in the night season;

  impossible to be hard of hearing; screw, screw, screw! Sometimes

  it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a whirr, like a

  ferocious firework, - except that it never expends itself, but is

  always ready to go off again; sometimes it seems to be in anguish,

  and shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified by its last plunge,

  and has a fit which causes it to struggle, quiver, and for an

  instant stop. And now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so

  fiercely screwed through time and space, day and night, fair

  weather and foul, CAN roll.

  Did she ever take a roll before like that last? Did she ever take

  a roll before like this worse one that is coming now? Here is the

  partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee side. Are we ever

  coming up again together? I think not; the partition and I are so

  long about it that I really do believe we have overdone it this

  time. Heavens, what a scoop! What a deep scoop, what a hollow

  scoop, what a long scoop! Will it ever end, and can we bear the

  heavy mass of water we have taken on board, and which has let loose

  all the table furniture in the officers' mess, and has beaten open

  the door of the little passage between the purser and me, and is

  swashing about, even there and even here? The purser snores

  reassuringly, and the ship's bells striking, I hear the cheerful

  'All's well!' of the watch musically given back the length of the

  deck, as the lately diving partition, now high in air, tries

  (unsoftened by what we have gone through together) to force me out

  of bed and berth.

  'All's well!' Comforting to know, though surely all might be

  better. Put aside the rolling and the rush of water, and think of

  darting through such darkness with such velocity. Think of any

  other similar object coming in the opposite direction!

  Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving bodies out at

  sea, which may help accident to bring them into collision?

  Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent all the while, but

  marvellously suggestive) of the gulf below; of the strange,

  unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys over which we are

  passing; of monstrous fish midway; of the ship's suddenly altering

  her course on her own account, and with a wild plunge settling

  down, and making THAT voyage with a crew of dead discoverers. Now,

  too, one recalls an almost universal tendency on the part of

  passengers to stumble, at some time or other in the day, on the

  topic of a certain large steamer making this same run, which was

  lost at sea, and never heard of more. Everybody has seemed under a

  spell, compelling approach to the threshold of the grim subject,

  stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence of never having been near it.

  The boatswain's whistle sounds! A change in the wind, hoarse

  orders issuing, and the watch very busy. Sails come crashing home

  overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto; every man engaged

  appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times the average amount

  of stamping power in each. Gradually the noise slackens, the

  hoarse cries die away, the boatswain's whistle softens into the

  soothing and contented notes, which rather reluctantly admit that

  the job is done for the time, and the voice sets in again.

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  Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, and swinging

  and swaying, until consciousness revives of atmospherical Windsor

  soap and bilge-water, and the voice announces that the giant has

  come for the water-cure again.

  Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that day, in

  the Bay of New York, O! Also as we passed clear of the Narrows,

  and got out to sea; also in many an idle hour at sea in sunny

  weather! At length the observations and computations showed that

  we should make the coast of Ireland to-night. So I stood watch on

  deck all night to-night, to see how we made the coast of Ireland.

  Very dark, and the s
ea most brilliantly phosphorescent. Great way

  on the ship, and double look-out kept. Vigilant captain on the

  bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the port side, vigilant

  second officer standing by the quarter-master at the compass,

  vigilant third officer posted at the stern rail with a lantern. No

  passengers on the quiet decks, but expectation everywhere

  nevertheless. The two men at the wheel very steady, very serious,

  and very prompt to answer orders. An order issued sharply now and

  then, and echoed back; otherwise the night drags slowly, silently,

  with no change.

  All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, a vague

  movement of relief from a long strain expresses itself in all

  hands; the third officer's lantern tinkles, and he fires a rocket,

  and another rocket. A sullen solitary light is pointed out to me

  in the black sky yonder. A change is expected in the light, but

  none takes place. 'Give them two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant.' Two

  more, and a blue-light burnt. All eyes watch the light again. At

  last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it; and, even as

  that small streak in the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed to

  Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and back again under the ocean

  to America.

  Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going ashore at

  Queenstown and up comes the mail-agent in charge of the bags, and

  up come the men who are to carry the bags into the mail-tender that

  will come off for them out of the harbour. Lamps and lanterns

  gleam here and there about the decks, and impeding bulks are

  knocked away with handspikes; and the port-side bulwark, barren but

  a moment ago, bursts into a crop of heads of seamen, stewards, and

  engineers.

  The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be alongside, begins

  to be left astern. More rockets, and, between us and the land,

  steams beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris, for New York,

  outward bound. We observe with complacency that the wind is dead

  against her (it being WITH us), and that she rolls and pitches.

  (The sickest passenger on board is the most delighted by this

  circumstance.) Time rushes by as we rush on; and now we see the

  light in Queenstown Harbour, and now the lights of the mail-tender

  coming out to us. What vagaries the mail-tender performs on the

  way, in every point of the compass, especially in those where she