FLORA'S FELLOW-PASSENGERS.
The grey dawn glimmered faintly through the bull's-eye of ground glass
in the ceiling of Mrs. Lyndsay's cabin, before she again unclosed her
eyes. She sat up in her berth and steadied herself, glancing at first
wonderingly around her, and marvelling where she was. The heaving of the
vessel, and the quick rushing of the waves against her sides, informed
her that the ship had sailed during the night, and recalled to her mind
the events of the past day.
The voyage, whether for good or ill, had commenced; and the certainty of
her present position relieved her mind of a heavy burden of anxiety. She
rose and dressed herself, and earnestly besought the Almighty to protect
them from the perils and dangers of the deep, and watch over them for
good during their passage across the mighty waters. Strengthened and
refreshed by this act of devotion, she felt her spirits revive and her
heart expand with renewed cheerfulness and hope, and trustfully
believed that God had given a favourable answer to her prayer.
Early as the hour was, she found watchful eyes awake in the ship. The
Captain was already on deck, and Sam Fraser, the Steward, a smart lad of
eighteen, was cleaning out the cabin. The boards felt cold and wet, and
Flora, who was anxious to see all she could of the coast of Scotland,
hurried upon deck, where she found her husband up before her, conversing
with the Captain.
The _Anne_, with all her white sails set, was scudding before a
favourable wind, which whistled aloft strange solemn anthems in the
shrouds. The sun had just climbed above the mountain-heights, that
formed a glorious background to the blue glancing waters, over which the
ship glided like a thing of life. It was a splendid July morning, and
the white-crested billows flashed and rolled their long sparkling surges
beneath a sky of cloudless brilliancy. All nature glowed with life and
beauty, as land and sea looked up rejoicingly, to hail the broad, open
eye of day.
"Twas heaven above--around--below."
The romantic features of the coast, with all the poetical and historical
associations connected with it, the deep music of ocean, the very smell
of the salt brine, filled the heart of Flora Lyndsay with hope and joy.
To have gazed upon such a soul-stirring scene with a mind burdened with
painful regrets, would have been an act of impiety towards the
bountiful Creator, whose presence is never more fully recognised than
when following the course that His wisdom has shaped out for us across
that pathless wilderness of waves,--that wonderful mirror of His power,
that, whether in storm or shine, faithfully reflects the glory and
greatness of its Maker.
With returning health and spirits, Flora's mind recovered its former
tone. She felt not only contented, but happy, and submitted herself with
child-like confidence to the protecting care of the universal Father.
All, doubtless, she thought, is ordained for the best. If not for us,
for our children. Others have toiled for us; it is but right that we
should toil in our turn. It is to the workers, not to the dreamers, that
earth opens up her treasures. Life is beset with trials, take which path
we may. The brightest sky at times is darkened by clouds; the calmest
ocean vexed with storms. What matters it that we are called upon to bear
the burden and heat of the day, if we receive the reward of our labours
at night? If the sunset be fair and peaceful, who recals the tempest
that darkened the heavens at noon? The quiet grave receives all at last;
and those who have worked hardest on earth, will find a brighter morning
for their eternal holiday of love and praise.
"What are you thinking of, Flora?" said Lyndsay, drawing her arm within
his own.
"I was thinking, dearest, that it was good to be here."
"Your thoughts, then, were an echo of my own. Depend upon it, Flora,
that we shall find it all right at last."
For a long time they stood together, silently surveying the magnificent
coast which was rapidly gliding from them. Lyndsay's soul-lighted eyes
rested proudly upon it; and a shade of melancholy passed across his
brow. It was his native land, and he deeply felt that he looked upon its
stern majestic face for the last time; but he was not a man who could
impart the inner throbbings of his heart, (and it was a great heart,) to
others. Such feelings he considered too sacred to unveil to common
observation; and even she could only read by the varying expression of
his countenance the thoughts that were working within.
"Courage, my dear Flora," he said at length, with one of his own kind
smiles. "All will be well in the end; and we shall still be happy in
each other's love. Yes, as happy in the backwoods of Canada, as we have
been in England."
Flora felt that with him she could be happy anywhere; that paradise
would be a prison, if his presence did not enliven and give interest to
the scene.
Few of the emigrants had found their way to the deck at that early hour;
and for some time Flora enjoyed a charming _tete-a-tete_ with her
husband. Gradually the deck grew more populous; and men were seen
lounging against the bulwarks, smoking their pipes, or performing their
ablutions, a wooden tub and canvass bucket serving them for hand-basin
and water-jug.
Tom afterwards commenced the great business of cooking the morning meal;
and Hannibal, the black lord of the caboose, was beset by a host of
scolding, jabbering women, all fighting and quarrelling for the first
chance at the stove. He took their abuse very coolly, settling the
dispute by making the auld wives draw lots for precedence. They
consented to this arrangement with a very bad grace. Not more than four
kettles could occupy the fire at one time, and though some clubbed, and
made their mess of porridge together in one large pot, the rest grumbled
and squabbled during the whole operation, elbowing and crowding for more
room, and trying to push each other's coffee and teapots into the fire.
And then all in a breath, at the very top of their shrill voices,
appealed to Hannibal to act as umpire among them, and establish their
claims to the best side of the fire. His answer was brief and to the
point--
"Dere be dis fire. You hab him so long. Him wait for no one. Your time
up. You take off pot, or I pitch pot into sea. Others must eat as well
as you; so keep your breath to cool your porridge; and if that no suit
you, fight it out--fight it out!"
Here he flourished over their heads his iron ladle, full of some
scalding liquor, which silenced the combatants for one while, until a
new set of applicants emerging from the gangway, made them rush more
vigorously than ever to the charge.
As Flora continued pacing the deck, and watching the noisy group round
the cooking-stove, she felt no small degree of curiosity respecting
them. They were her fellow-voyagers to that unknown land to which all
their hopes and fears instinctively turned; and she could scarcely
regard with indifference those whom Providence had thrown together in
pursuit of the same object. She wanted to know something about them from
their own lips--what their past lives had been, what were their future
prospects, and the causes that had led them to emigrate to Canada.
Perhaps something of the same feeling is experienced by most persons
suddenly thrown together and confined for some weeks in such a narrow
space as the interior of a small brig, for the _Anne_ contained more
passengers for her size and tonnage than many large three-masted
vessels. During the long voyage her curiosity was amply gratified, and
she learned something of the history and characters of most of these
people. First, there was an old highland soldier, who had served during
the greater part of the Peninsular war, and had seen a great deal of
hard service, and received a number of hard knocks in the way of wounds
and broken bones, of which (now the pain and danger was over) he was not
a little proud, as they formed a never-ending theme of boasting and
self-exaltation; and had honest Donald Macdonald charged his
fellow-passengers a penny a peep at the scars on his legs, breast, and
arms, he might have made enough to pay the expenses of his passage out.
"His wounds," he said, "were all in the right place. He was too well
bred to turn his back to an enemy."
Macdonald was one of the many unfortunate old pensioners, who had been
induced to part with a certain provision for his old age, to try his
fortunes in the backwoods of Canada. He knew as little of hard labour as
any officer in his regiment, still less of agricultural pursuits; and
perhaps could barely have told the difference between one sort of grain
and another, having entered the army a mere boy, quite raw and
inexperienced, from his native hills.
He had a wife, and five rude, brawny, coarse children--the three eldest
girls from seven to fourteen years of age. "They were not of the right
sort," he said; "but they were strong enough for boys, and would make
fine mothers for dragoons to serve in case of war."
But as Canada is not at all a warlike country, these qualifications in
his bouncing, red haired lassies, were no recommendation. The two spoilt
boys were still in short coats, and could afford little help to their
veteran father for many years to come.
Donald had formed the most extravagant notions of Canada. In his eyes it
was a perfect El Dorado, where gold was as plentiful as blackberries
upon the bushes. He did not seem ever to have given the idea of having
to work for his living a thought--and laughed at a notion so
disagreeable and repugnant to his old habits, as absurd.
"Whar was the use of ganging to a new country," he said, "if a bodie had
to work as hard there as in the auld?"
After paying his passage-money, and furnishing provisions for the
voyage, he had only the sum of nineteen pounds remaining, which he
considered an inexhaustible fund of wealth, from which he was to obtain,
not only a comfortable living in the land of promise, but an independent
fortune. He was entitled to a grant of land, which he said, "Would make
him a laird, and place him on an equal footing with the lairds in the
backwoods of Canada."
Flora often wondered in after years, what became of poor Macdonald and
all his high-flown dreams of future greatness.
The wife of the old soldier was a tall, raw-boned, red-fisted virago,
who fought with both fists and tongue. She seemed to live in a perfect
element of strife. A quarrel could not exist in the ship without her
being either the original cause, or the active promoter of it, after it
was once set on foot. She would bully the captain, out-swear the
sailors, and out-scold all the rest of the femalities in the vessel.
The daughter of a soldier, born amidst the horrors of war, and brought
up as a camp-follower, her ignorance of all the gentler humanities of
life was only exceeded by her violence. While assisting in pillaging the
dead, after the battle of Waterloo, she had found the sum of a hundred
gold Napoleons concealed in a belt upon the person of a dead French
officer. This made her a woman of fortune, and led to her marriage with
her present husband, for she had had several, who doubtless were glad to
be released by death from the unnatural tyranny of such a mate.
Macdonald was an easy, good-natured man, who for the sake of peace, let
the wilful woman have her own way, and thrash him and the bairns as
often as the wicked spirit by which she was possessed, prompted her to
exhibit these peculiar marks of her conjugal and maternal love.
Had Macdonald been asked, why he submitted to such base treatment from
his wife, he might have answered with the tall Canadian backwoodsman,
when questioned on the same subject,--
"It pleases her, and it don't hurt I."
Mrs. Macdonald was in a delicate situation, and from the very day the
ship sailed, she gave out that she was on the eve of an increase to her
interesting family: to the great indignation of the captain, who had a
mortal antipathy to babies, and who declared in his rough way, "That it
was an imposition; Mrs. Macdonald had no right to swindle him into
taking out more passengers than he had bargained for."
The stalwart dame was enchanted that she had found out a way to annoy
the captain, to whose orders she was forced to submit, and whom in
consequence she regarded as a bitter enemy. In fact she did all in her
power to encourage his fears respecting her. Whenever he paced the deck
in sullen dignity, she began to sigh and groan, and declare in a voice
loud enough for him to overhear, "That she did na think that she could
haud out anither day ava'."
There was another pensioner on board who was the sworn friend and
countryman of Macdonald. Hugh Mackenzie was a dragoon, and a fine tall,
soldierly-looking man. His wife was a little, chatty, gossiping woman,
from Berwickshire; a good creature in her way, but sadly addicted to the
use of strong waters, drowning the little sense she had in the fumes of
whiskey and brandy. She and her husband spent all their time in eating
and drinking, when they were not taking snuff and smoking. They were
cooking, or preparing for it, from morning till night; and generally
headed the forlorn hope which three times a day besieged the caboose,
and defied the valiant Hannibal to his very teeth.
Mrs. Mackenzie was the very reverse of her gude friend, Mrs. Macdonald;
for she stood in perpetual fear of her tall husband, who thrashed her
soundly when she got drunk. Moreover, she was very jealous of all the
young women in the ship, whom she termed, "Lazy, bold, gude for nought
hizzies, who wud na led a' bodies ain man alane."
She would sit for hours on the deck smoking a short black pipe, and
crooning old border ballads, in a voice anything but musical.
During Flora's long morning promenade upon deck, she more than once
caught a pair of yellow, queer-looking eyes peering at her from beneath
the shade of one of the boats which were slung to the main-mast, and
by-and-by a singularly disagreeable-looking head raised itself from a
couch of cloaks, and continued its investigation in a very intrusive
manner. The head belonged to a little man in a snuff-coloured suit,
whose small, pert, pugnacious face, eyes, hair and complexion, were only
a variety of the same shades as the dress in which he had cased his
outer man. Flora quietly pointed him out to her husband, and asked in a
whisper, "What he thought of the little brown man?"
"His appearance is not at all prepossessing," said Lyndsay. "I will ask
the Captain, who is coming this way, who and what he is?"
The question seemed to embarrass old Boreas not a little. He threw a
frowning glance towards the spot occupied by the stranger, shrugged his
shoulders, whistled a tune, and thrusting his hands into his breeches'
pockets, took several turns on the deck before he made any reply. Until,
seeing the snuff-coloured individual about to crawl out of his
hiding-place, he called out in a gruff voice--
"Keep where you are, Sir--the longer you remain out of sight the better.
By exposing yourself to observation, you may cause trouble to more
persons than _one_!"
The person thus unceremoniously addressed, smiled malignantly, and
retreating beneath the shade of the boat, snarled out some reply, only
audible to the captain; whose advice did not however seem lost upon him,
for after the Lyndsays had taken another turn or two, and he had glared
at them with his little fiery eyes, sufficiently to gratify his insolent
curiosity, he again emerged from under the boat, and succeeded in
tumbling into it. Drawing a part of a spare sail over his diminutive
person, he vanished as completely from sight, as if the ocean had
suddenly swallowed him up.
"I was a d----d fool!" muttered the captain, returning to Lyndsay's
side, "to let that fellow, with his ugly, sneering phiz, come on board!
But as he is here, I must make the best of a bad bargain. You will not
peach, so I'll just give you a bit of his history, and explain the
necessity of his keeping close until we are out of the sight of land.
Hang him! his ugly phiz is enough to sink the ship. Had I seen him
before he came on board, he might have rotted in gaol before I took
charge of his carcase. And then, 'tis such a conceited ass, he will take
no advice, and cares as little for his own safety as he does for mine."
"Is he a runaway felon?" asked Flora.
"You have not made a bad guess, Mistress Lyndsay. He was a distiller,
who carried on a good business in Edinburgh. He cheated the Government,
and was cashiered for a large sum, more than he could pay by a long
chalk. His friends contrived his escape, and smuggled him on board last
night, just as the anchor was being weighed. They offered me a handsome
sum to carry him to Quebec. Should he be discovered by any of the
passengers before we lose sight of the British coast, he would be seized
when the ship puts into Kirkwall, and that would be a bad job for us
both. The transaction is entirely between his friends and me; Mr. Gregg
knows nothing about it."
"And are we to have the pleasure of his company in the cabin during the
voyage?"
"That would be bad indeed. No, he has a berth provided for him in the
store-room, and has the privilege of having his grub sent to him from
the cabin-table, and the use of the tea and coffeepot after we have done
with it. This is quite good enough for a rogue like him. But I hear Sam
Frazer hallooing for breakfast. Come down to the cabin, Mrs. Lyndsay,
the sea air must have made you hungry."
The little cabin was in apple-pie order. A clean diaper cloth covered
the table, on which the common crockery, cups and saucers were arranged
with mathematical precision, while the savoury smell of fried fish and
hot coffee, promised the hungry emigrants a substantial breakfast.
On inquiring for Hannah and James Hawke, Flora found that both were
confined to their berths with sea-sickness. Old Boreas complimented her
not a little on her being able to appear at the breakfast-table. The
fish proved excellent; the coffee, a black, bitter compound, which Flora
drank with a very ill grace. The captain, with an air of exultation,
produced from his own private cupboard, which formed the back panelling
of his berth, a great stone jar of milk, which his wife had prepared
with sugar to last him the voyage.
"Have you no cow on board?" asked Flora, rather anxiously, for little
Josey and her comfort was always uppermost in her mind.
"Cow! Who the devil would be bothered with a cow," said Boreas, "when he
can procure a substitute like this. Here's my dun cow; she'll give us
what we want without the trouble of milking. Won't she, Sam?" appealing
to his steward, to second his assertion.
"Yes, Sir," and Sam grinned applause. "But I'm jist thinkin', Captain,
that the weather's o'er hot, an' the dun cow may gang drie afore we see
Canada."
The captain's cow turned out a very sorry animal, for in less than two
days the milk was so putrid, that it had to be thrown overboard, and his
cabin-passengers were forced to drink the vile coffee, and still viler
tea, without milk, during the rest of the voyage, with only coarse brown
sugar to soften its disagreeable flavour.
It must be confessed, that the cabin bill of fare presented no tempting
variety. After the first week the fresh mutton and beef was changed to
salt pork and hard junk, ship biscuit and peas, and potatoes of the last
year's growth, rancid butter, and oatmeal porridge, with porter and
brown sugar for sauce; and sometimes--but this was a very great
dainty--a slice of Dunlop cheese. Nothing but hunger, and constant
exercise upon the deck in the open air, reconciled Mrs. Lyndsay to this
coarse diet. It was not what they had been promised; but complaints were
useless. There certainly was no danger of hurting their health by over
indulgence, as it was with difficulty they could satisfy their hunger
with the unpalatable fare, which was old, and not even good of its kind.
The Lyndsays were always glad when the homely meal was over, and they
could escape once more to the deck, and enjoy the fine coast views, and
the fresh invigorating sea breeze.