Part 1 (2/2)
There were those on the platform not so happy as we were; an old lady I saw held the hand of a young soldier in pathetic silence, and the smiles on the faces of those left at home were not particularly cheerful, and the grey set expression of men leaving wives and children is hard to forget. A younger lady I saw on the platform smiling, and straight as a soldier, threw herself into her sister's arms as the train moved off in a perfect abandonment of grief, and the wrinkles in the old lady's face as we pa.s.sed were full of tears--two to one against her seeing the young man, son, or grandson, on this side. But I suppose that is India all over--many partings, a few tears shed, and enough kept back to float a fleet.
Our 'guid brither'[1] and his wife have come in the train with us to Tilbury to see us on board, so we are all very jolly and the sun s.h.i.+nes bright on the river and white c.u.mulous clouds, and the brown sails of the barges are swelling with a brisk north-east breeze as they come up on the top of the flood. The ”Egypt” lies in mid-stream, and all the pa.s.sengers of our train go off to it in tenders, along with hundreds of friends who have come to see them off--there is a crowd! Pa.s.sengers only bring hand baggage with them, the rest went on board yesterday; the embarkation is beautifully managed and orderly, there is an astonis.h.i.+ng repression of excitement and show of out of place feeling. To compare this embarkation with that on a foreign liner; I have seen the whole business of taking pa.s.sengers and luggage on board an Italian liner stopped for minutes by one Egyptian with a tin of milk on the gangway, holding forth on his grievances to the world at large, whilst handsome officers on deck smiled futilely, their white-gloved hands behind their backs. I suppose it is this military precision that gives the P. & O.
their name and their pa.s.sengers a sense of security; but there are people so hard to please that they ask for less pipeclay, less crowded cabins, and better service and more deck s.p.a.ce, and these carpers will never be content, so long as they see other lines, such as the j.a.panese, giving all they clamour for, comfortable bath-rooms, beds, and a laundry at moderate rates.
[1] Brother-in-law.
A touch of militarism that I rather fancy on the P. & O. is the bugle call going round the s.h.i.+p before meals; it is such a jolly cheery sound to awaken to. It comes from far along the s.h.i.+p in the morning, at first faintly in the distance, when you are half-awake trying to account for the faint sound of machinery and the running reflections on your white roof, dimly conscious of the ever delightful feeling that you are sailing south across the widest and most level of all plains. Louder and louder it comes along the alley-way, till outside your cabin door it fairly makes you jump! A jolly, cheery sound it is, almost nothing in the world so stirring excepting the pipes. There's a laughing brazen defiance in it, and gentleness too, as it dies away--most masculine music! What a.s.sociations it must have for soldiers; even to the man of peace it suggests plate armour, the listed field and battles long ago.... Did you ever hear it in Edinburgh? up in the empty, windy castle esplanade--empty of all but memories--You see no bugler, but the wide grey walls and sky are filled with its golden notes. It echoes for a moment, and then there is quietness, till the noise of the town comes up again. And at night have you heard it? from the _Far Side_ of Princes Street, the ethereal notes between you and the stars, long drawn notes of the last post, from an invisible bugler in the loom of the rock and the rolling clouds.
G. murmurs, ”It is abominable--but after all, going to sea is all a matter of endurance.” What a difference there is in the point of view--G., I must say, had a hair mattress last night, and it was not properly blanketted and entailed a certain amount of endurance; on the other hand she is extremely fortunate in having such glorious pink roses and beautiful hangings for nicknacks, touching parting gifts from friends, so her cabin already looks fairly homely; and then, on the walls, there is the most perfect round picture, framed in the bright bra.s.s of the porthole--a sailing s.h.i.+p hull down on the horizon, her sails s.h.i.+ning like gold in the morning sun, on a sea of mother of pearl.... There is just the faintest rise and fall, and the air is full of the steady silky rus.h.i.+ng sound; what is there like it, which you hear in fine weather when the sea makes way to let you pa.s.s.
Painted at a sketch to-day of people coming on board the ”Egypt” from the tender, no great thing in colour, less in a black and white reproduction, for eye and hand were a little taken up with luggage--a note of lascars in blue dungarees and red turbans--East meeting West--the Indies in mauve and lilac hats and white veils; for shades of purple are all the fas.h.i.+on this year.
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I have found a corner in the waist between first and second cla.s.s, where one can draw or paint without being very much overlooked; you can get under the sky there, elsewhere you can't, and only see the horizon, for our first cla.s.s deck is under the officers' deck, and the second cla.s.s is covered with awnings, a very poor arrangement I think for you only get light on your toes. A sailing s.h.i.+p's deck is ever so much nicer, for you have a reasonable bulwark to keep wind and water off your body instead of an open rail. You can look over a bulwark comfortably, your eyes sheltered from the glare off the sea; on these steam-liners it comes slanting up to your eyes under eyebrows and eyelashes--no wonder people take to blue spectacles! In the sailing s.h.i.+p too you can look up and watch the bends of white canvas and the spars-and cordage swinging to and fro across the infinite blue, an endless delight! Here you have a floor and blistered paint a few inches above you, on which you know the officers promenade with the full sweep of the horizon round them and the arc of the sky above. Still another advantage of the sailing s.h.i.+p is, that you are not just one of a crowd, ticketed No. so and so, bedded, fed, and checked off by a numeral; and you can generally count on a barometer, and learn the names of lights and lands you pa.s.s; possibly there may even be a thermometer, and certainly a compa.s.s. On this ”Egypt,” barring a small scale Mercator's projection of the world on which the s.h.i.+p's position is marked daily, there is no means of getting the information that can make a sea voyage so infinitely interesting. I would suggest large sized charts showing landmarks, s.h.i.+p's position, and barometrical readings. What is more interesting at sea than the charts of ocean depths, currents, winds, salinity, and temperature! If you go too fast to touch on Plankton, Nekton, and Benthos, at least let the poor first cla.s.s pa.s.sengers have a compa.s.s, if not a barograph and a thermometer, to eke out conversations on the weather, the day's run, and bridge.
”THE BAY”--the Great Bay, calm as a mill pond--there's a jolly sense of rest and peace on board; I suppose everyone knows that feeling who has gone East. For weeks you have been doing things, shopping, packing, keeping appointments, then you get out of the bustle of town, breathe again clear air, and rest, on the level sea, that lovely water cus.h.i.+on, the most soothing of all beds.
Everyone is soporific and very restful. We begin to distinguish individuals amongst the many pa.s.sengers, but so far no one seems particularly conspicuous. They are rather good-looking as a crowd, and one or two children are like angels--at least we hope so.
It is darker ahead now and to the east, the shadow of the World on Nothing, I suppose! possibly an October breeze coming--low banks of cirri-c.u.muli above the horizon--clear overhead with streaks of rusty red cloud fine as hair--the evening is cold, here is an attempt at it with a brush. And we had music in the place for music on deck; an Irish lady played the fiddle and played so well with a piano accompaniment to an audience of six--if the Bay keeps quite the audience ought to increase.
After the sunset, dinner--what a tedious business it is; the waiting is perfectly planned, but the waiters themselves have to wait ages at the two service hatches, where they get all jammed together, so the time between the courses seems interminable; you almost forget you are at a meal at all. To-night dinner and conversation both hang fire at our end of the table, and I overhear from the other end where my cousin sits interesting sc.r.a.ps about India, which is distinctly annoying; R. is relating some of his experiences there that set his neighbours and my niece and Mrs Deputy-Commissioner all chuckling.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
I gather that R. converted a certain Swiss. They lived near each other, a lonely life on the ”Black Cotton Soil,” whatever that is. R. says it blows about like snow. The Swiss lived in a little corrugated-iron house with some hens, and no books, and he loved books, and hated his house and hens, and the British Empire. R. had a nice bungalow and lots of books, and he lent these to the Swiss, on condition that he would read our newspapers! with the result that the Swiss ceased to believe in British ”methods of barbarism,” said he admired the Empire, and got quite to like his tin house and the black soil,--even his hens!
It is so quiet in the smoking-room to-night--not even bridge going on yet, which perhaps accounts for the discursiveness of these rambling notes on a quiet Sat.u.r.day night at sea.
Now comes Sunday. ”Come day go day, G.o.d send Sunday,” as the discontented sailor growls before the mast. The day of the month unknown--I do not think it matters, in such notes as these, dates are rather like ruled lines on sketching paper, only distracting.... We have had such a pleasant time so far, that a Presbyterian lady was quite surprised when at breakfast I told her the day of the week, as she had not heard any clanging and clas.h.i.+ng of bells, and as everybody seemed quite cheerful and there were no black clothes, she could not realise it was Sunday. But this afternoon it is not joyful for all! There is a solemn grey sky sweeping over us from Spain, with a grandeur and breadth that one only a.s.sociates with Spanish skies, and there is a fresh breeze, but warm from the land, and this big tub moves a little, enough to make one realise the Sea is alive, her bosom heaves us along slightly, a delightful motion for some of us, and intensely soothing, but alas! there are empty places at our board. What a penance it is this sea-sickness. In the words of Burns,
”It is a dizziness, That will not let a body gang About his business”
at all, at all.... I was a pale-faced student, a week out from Leith to Antwerp, when I first felt this rudeness: we struck a fog-bank off St.
Abb's Head to begin with, and a sand-bank off Middlesborough, and listened there to the c.o.c.ks crowing on sh.o.r.e without seeing a foot ahead for the thickness of the grey, wet mist. We cheered ourselves with bagpipes, and the captain had a case of the very best brandy, the first I think I ever tasted; and he could play some tunes on the practise chanter. ”Dinna think bonnie la.s.sie, I'm goin' to leave you,” I remember was his best; it is a strathspey tune; I learned it from him. The trouble came when it blew up hard off the Scheldt; but even when coming over the bar, the ”romance” of the sea qualified its pains a little. I can feel the cold in my hands to-day of the barrels of the Winchesters at the side of the couch, and to which I clung in my hour of trial, and remembered they had been used in the steamer's very last trip against _Real Pirates_ in the China Seas! And certainly there was the ”romance”
of the sea in the change from the gale and black night outside the bar, to the quiet morning on the wide river with the cathedral spire, violet against the sunrise, dropping its silvery music ”from heaven like dew;”
”Madame Angot,” was the tune I think, with a note missing here and there.
We saw a number of sea birds to-day, and two at least were skuas, black looking thieves among their white cousins. I saw one try to make a gull disgorge, driving up at it from below, to the gull's loudly-expressed disgust. It is a strange arrangement of nature, and I can't understand why a few gulls don't combine to defend themselves. I am sure each of them must hate to give up the little meal they have earned with so much tiring flight. There were sh.o.r.e birds too; we s.h.i.+pped some as pa.s.sengers, they were going south like ourselves, but by instinct not by the card. I suppose they were on the road all right, and just needed to rest their wings a little; two large black birds were on the bridge last night, possibly crows, and we have starlings to-day, and I saw some finches of sorts. At least one of these fragile boarders was eaten by the s.h.i.+p's cat--I found its delicate remains, a few tiny feathers and a dainty wing and its poor head.
The land is very faint on the horizon and the breeze is just going down, such as it was; it's a momentary interest at the end of a somewhat dull, grey day to most pa.s.sengers.
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