This is a story of a voyage home. The boat was one of the finest
on the line and we were not overcrowded. We had wonderful weather
that trip, brilliant sunshine relieved by a fresh little breeze
that kept its place, doing its duty without taking too much upon
itself, or making itself obnoxious. In the third-class we were
quiet on the whole, and what is called well-behaved, though
neither with millennial serenity nor millennial sobriety.
A red-cheeked gentleman took a red-cheeked married lady and her
child under his vigilant protection. Two or three Rhodesians and
Jo'burgers enriched the bar with faithful fondness. Cards and
sweeps on the run of the boat and the selling of sweep-tickets
these all stimulated the circulation of savings. Hues of language
vied with hues of sunset not seldom of an eventide.
Life was not so very thrilling on that voyage, the treading of
'border-land dim 'twixt vice and virtue' is apt to be rather a
dull business.
There was no such incident as that which stirred us on another
voyage the taking of a carving knife to the purser by a drunkard.
On the other hand there was no unusual battle-noise of spiritual
combat such as may have quickened the pulses of one or two of the
boats the year of the English Mission.
We were middling, and dull at that, on the "Sluys Castle," till
we reached Madeira. Then the description I have given of our
voyage ceases to apply. The two or three days after that were
exciting enough to one or two passengers at any rate.
James Carraway had come down from Kimberley, he told me. He
was a spare, slight man, with a red moustache. He sought me
occasionally of an eventide, and confided to me views of life
in general, and of some of his fellow-passengers in particular.
I remember one night especially, when the Southern Cross
was in full view and the water about the keel splotched with
phosphorescence. Carraway had a big grievance that night. He
commented acridly on a colored woman that I had espied on board.
She was not very easily visible herself, but one or two faintly
colored children played often about the deck, and she herself
might now and then be seen nursing a baby. I had seen her on a
bench sometimes when I had gone to the library to change a book.
I had seen her more rarely in the sunshine on deck, nursing the
aforesaid baby.
'One man's brought a Kaffir wife on board,' growled Carraway.