The finding of an individual in a large emigrant ship may not inaptly be
compared to the finding of a needle in a haystack. Foreseeing the
difficulty, the missionary asked Captain Bream how he proposed to set
about it.
"You say that you do not know the married name of your sister?" he said,
as they drew near to the towering sides of the great vessel.
"No; I do not."
"And you have not seen her for many years?"
"Not for many years."
"Nevertheless, you are quite sure that you will recognise her when you
do see her?"
"Ay, as sure as I am that I'd know my own face in a lookin'-glass, for
she had points about her that I'm quite sure time could never alter."
"You are involved in a great difficulty, I fear," continued his friend,
"for, in the first place, the time at your disposal is not long; you
cannot ask for the number of her berth, not having her name, and there
is little probability of your being able to see every individual in a
vessel like this while they keep moving about on deck and below."
The captain admitted that the difficulties were great and his
countenance grew longer, for, being as we have said a remarkably
sympathetic man, the emotions of his heart were quickly telegraphed to
his features.
"It strikes me," continued the missionary, in a comforting tone, "that
your best chance of success will be to enter my service for the
occasion, and go about with me distributing New Testaments and tracts.
You will thus, as it were, have a reason for going actively about
looking into people's faces, and even into their berths. Excuse me for
asking--what do you think of doing if you find your sister, for the
vessel starts in a few hours?"
"Oh, I'll get her--and--and her husband to give up the voyage and return
ashore with me. I'm well enough off to make it worth their while."
The missionary did not appear to think the plan very hopeful, but as
they ran alongside at the moment them was no time for reply.
It was indeed a bewildering scene to which they were introduced on
reaching the deck. The confusion of parting friends; of pushing porters
with trunks and boxes; perplexed individuals searching for lost luggage;
distracted creatures looking for lost relatives; calm yet energetic
officers in merchant-service uniform moving about giving directions;
active seamen pushing through the crowds in obedience to orders;
children of all sizes playing and getting in people's way; infants of
many kinds yelling hideously or uttering squalls of final despair.
There was pathos and comicality too, intermingled. Behold, on one side,
an urchin sitting astonished--up to his armpits in a bandbox through
which he has just crashed--and an irate parent trying to drag him out;
while, on your other side, stands a grief-stricken mother trying to say
farewell to a son whose hollow cheeks, glittering eyes, and short cough
give little hope of a meeting again on this side the grave. Above all
the din, as if to render things more maddening, the tug alongside keeps
up intermittent shrieks of its steam-whistle, for the first bell has
rung to warn those who are not passengers to prepare for quitting the
steamer. Soon the second bell rings, and the bustle increases while in
the excitement of partings the last farewells culminate.
"We don't need to mind that bell, having our boat alongside," said the
missionary to Captain Bream, as they stood a little to one side silently
contemplating the scene. "You see that smart young officer in uniform,
close to the cabin skylight?"
"Yes."
"That's the captain."
"Indeed. He seems to me very young to have charge of such a vessel."
"Not so young as he looks," returned the other. "I shall have to get
his permission before attempting anything on board, so we must wait here
for a few minutes. You see, he has gone into his cabin with the owners
to have a few parting words. While we are standing you'll have one of
the best opportunities of seeing the passengers, for most of them will
come on deck to bid relatives and friends farewell, and wave
handkerchiefs as the tug steams away, so keep your eyes open.
Meanwhile, I will amuse you with a little chit-chat about emigrants.
This vessel is one of the largest that runs to Australia."
"Indeed," responded the captain, with an absent look and tone that would
probably have been the same if his friend had said that it ran to the
moon. The missionary did not observe that his companion was hopelessly
sunk in the sea of abstraction.
"Yes," he continued, "and, do you know, it is absolutely amazing what an
amount of emigration goes on from this port continually, now-a-days.
You would scarcely believe it unless brought as I am into close contact
with it almost daily. Why, there were no fewer than 26,000 emigrants
who sailed from the Thames in the course of last year."
"How many hogsheads, did you say?" asked the captain, still deeply sunk
in abstraction.
A laugh from his friend brought him to the surface, however, in some
confusion.
"Excuse me," he said, with a deprecatory look; "the truth is, my mind is
apt to wander a bit in such a scene, and my eyes chanced to light at the
moment you spoke on that hogshead over there. How many emigrants, did
you say?"
"No fewer than 26,000," repeated the missionary good-naturedly, and went
on to relate some interesting incidents, but the captain was soon again
lost in the contemplation of a poor young girl who had wept to such an
extent at parting from a female friend, then in the tug, that her
attempts to smile through the weeping had descended from the sublime to
the ridiculous. She and her friend continued to wave their kerchiefs
and smile and cry at each other notwithstanding, quite regardless of
public opinion, until the tug left. Then the poor young thing hid her
sodden face in her moist handkerchief and descended with a moan of woe
to her berth. Despite the comical element in this incident, a tear was
forced out of Captain Bream's eye, and we rather think that the
missionary was similarly affected. But, to say truth, the public at
large cared little for such matters. Each was too much taken up with
the pressing urgency of his or her own sorrows to give much heed to the
woes of strangers.
"People in such frames of mind are easily touched by kind words and
influences," said the missionary in a low voice.
"True, the ground is well prepared for you," returned the captain
softly, for another group had absorbed his attention.
"And I distribute among them Testaments, gospels, and tracts, besides
bags filled with books and magazines."
"Was there much powder in 'em?" asked the captain, struggling to the
surface at the last word.
"I don't know about that," replied his friend with a laugh, "but I may
venture to say that there was a good deal of fire in some of them."
"Fire!" exclaimed the captain in surprise. Explanation was prevented by
the commander of the vessel issuing at that moment from the cabin with
the owners. Hearty shakings of hands and wishes for a good voyage
followed. The officers stood at the gangway; the last of the weeping
laggards was kindly but firmly led away; the tug steamed off, and the
emigrant vessel was left to make her final preparations for an immediate
start on her long voyage to the antipodes, with none but her own
inhabitants on board, save a few who had private means of quitting.
"Now is our time," said the missionary, hastening towards the captain of
the vessel.
For one moment the latter gave him a stern look, as if he suspected him
of being a man forgotten by the tug, but a bland smile of good-will
overspread his features when the former explained his wishes.
"Certainly, my good sir, go where you like, and do what you please."
Armed with this permission, he and Captain Bream went to work to
distribute their gifts.
Most of the people received these gladly, some politely, a few with
suspicion, as if they feared that payment was expected, and one or two
refused them flatly. The distributers, meanwhile, had many an
opportunity afforded, when asked questions, of dropping here and there
"a word in season."
As this was the first time Captain Bream had ever been asked to act as
an amateur distributer of Testaments and tracts, he waited a few
minutes, with one of his arms well-filled, to observe how his companion
proceeded, and then himself went to work.
Of course, during all this time, he had not for an instant forgotten the
main object of his journey. On the contrary, much of the absence of
mind to which we have referred was caused by the intense manner, in
which he scanned the innumerable faces that passed to and fro before
him. He now went round eagerly distributing his gifts, though not so
much impressed with the importance of the work as he would certainly
have been had his mind been less pre-occupied. It was observed,
however, that the captain offered his parcels and Testaments only to
women, a circumstance which caused a wag from Erin to exclaim--
"Hallo! old gentleman, don't ye think the boys has got sowls as well as
the faimales?"
This was of course taken in good part by the captain, who at once
corrected the mistake. But after going twice round the deck, and
drawing forth many humorous as well as caustic remarks as to his size
and general appearance, he was forced to the conclusion that his sister
was not there. The lower regions still remained, however.
Descending to these with some hope and a dozen Testaments, he found that
the place was so littered with luggage, passengers, and children, that
it was extremely difficult to move. To make the confusion worse, nearly
the whole space between decks had been fitted up with extra berths--here
for the married, there for the unmarried--so that very little room
indeed was left for passage, and exceedingly little light entered.
But Captain Bream was not affected by such matters. He was accustomed
to them, and his eyesight was good. He was bent on one object, which he
pursued with quiet, unflagging perseverance--namely, that of gazing
earnestly into the face of every woman in the ship.
So eager was the poor man about it that he forgot to offer the last
armful of Testaments which he had undertaken to distribute, and simply
went from berth to berth staring at the females. He would undoubtedly
have been considered mad if it had not been that the women were too much
taken up with their own affairs, to think much about any one with whom
they had nothing to do.
One distracting, and also disheartening, part of the process was, that,
owing to the general activity on board, he came again and again to the
same faces in different parts of the vessel, but he so frequently missed
seeing others that hope was kept alive by the constant turning up of new
faces. Alas! none of them bore any resemblance to that for which he
sought so earnestly!
At last he returned to the place where his friend was preaching. By
that time, however, the crowd was so great that he could not enter.
Turning aside, therefore, into an open berth, with a feeling of
weariness and depression creeping over his mind and body, he was about
to sit down on a box, when a female voice at the other end of the berth
demanded to know what he wanted.
Hope was a powerful element in Captain Bream's nature. He rose quickly
and stopped to gaze attentively into a female face, but it was so dark
where she sat on a low box that he could hardly see her, and took a step
forward.
"Well, Mr Imprence, I hope as you'll know me again," said the woman,
whose face was fiery red, and whose nature was furious. "What _do_ you
want here?"
The captain sighed profoundly. _That_ was obviously not his sister!
Then a confused feeling of incapacity to give a good reason for being
there came over him. Suddenly he recollected the Testaments.
"Have one?" he said eagerly, as he offered one of the little black
books.
"Have what?"
"A Testament."
"No, I won't have a Testament, I'm a Catholic," said the woman as she
looked sternly up.
Captain Bream was considering how he might best suggest that the Word of
God was addressed to all mankind, when a thought seemed to strike the
woman.
"Are you the cap'n?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied absently, and with some degree of truth.
"Then it's my opinion, cap'n, an' I tell it you to your face, that you
ought to be ashamed of yourself to put honest men an' wimen in places
like this--neither light, nor hair, nor nothink in the way of hornament
to--"
"Captain Bream! are you there, sir?" cried the voice of his friend the
missionary at that moment down the companion-hatch.
"Ay, ay, I'm here."
"I've found her at last, sir."
The captain incontinently dropped the dozen Testaments into the woman's
lap and went up the companion-ladder like a tree-squirrel.
"This way, sir. She's sittin' abaft the funnel."
In a few seconds Captain Bream and his companion stood before a
pretty-faced, fair-haired woman with soft gentle eyes, which suddenly
opened with surprise as the two men hurried forward and came to a halt
in front of her. The captain looked anxiously at his friend.
"Is this the--" he stopped.
"Yes, that's her," said the missionary with a nod. The captain turned
slowly on his heel, and an irrepressible groan burst from him as he
walked away.
There was no need for the disappointed missionary to ask if he had been
mistaken. One look had sufficed for the captain.
Sadly they returned to the shore, and there the missionary, being near
his house, invited Captain Bream to go home with him and have a cup of
tea.
"It will revive you, my dear sir," he said, as the captain stood in
silence at his side with his head bowed down. "The disappointment must
indeed be great. Don't give up hope, however. But your clothes are wet
still. No wonder you shiver, having gone about so long in damp
garments. Come away."
Captain Bream yielded in silence. He not only went and had a cup of his
hospitable friends's tea, but he afterwards accepted the offer of one of
his beds, where he went into a high fever, from which he did not recover
for many weary weeks.