第4章 CHAPTER I(1)

Embarkation at Gravesend--Arrest of Passenger--Tilbury Fort--Deal--Bay of Biscay Gale--Becalmed off Teneriffe--Fire in the Galley--Trade Winds--Belt of Calms--Death on Board--Shark--Current--S.E.Trade Winds--Temperature--Birds--Southern Cross--Cyclone.

It is a windy,rainy day--cold withal;a little boat is putting off from the pier at Gravesend,and making for a ship that is lying moored in the middle of the river;therein are some half-dozen passengers and a lot of heterogeneous-looking luggage;among the passengers,and the owner of some of the most heterogeneous of the heterogeneous luggage,is myself.

The ship is an emigrant ship,and I am one of the emigrants.

On having clambered over the ship's side and found myself on deck,I was somewhat taken aback with the apparently inextricable confusion of everything on board;the slush upon the decks,the crying,the kissing,the mustering of the passengers,the stowing away of baggage still left upon the decks,the rain and the gloomy sky created a kind of half-amusing,half-distressing bewilderment,which I could plainly see to be participated in by most of the other landsmen on board.Honest country agriculturists and their wives were looking as though they wondered what it would end in;some were sitting on their boxes and making a show of reading tracts which were being presented to them by a serious-looking gentleman in a white tie;but all day long they had perused the first page only,at least I saw none turn over the second.

And so the afternoon wore on,wet,cold,and comfortless--no dinner served on account of the general confusion.The emigration commissioner was taking a final survey of the ship and shaking hands with this,that,and the other of the passengers.Fresh arrivals kept continually creating a little additional excitement--these were saloon passengers,who alone were permitted to join the ship at Gravesend.By and by a couple of policemen made their appearance and arrested one of the party,a London cabman,for debt.He had a large family,and a subscription was soon started to pay the sum he owed.Subsequently,a much larger subscription would have been made in order to have him taken away by anybody or anything.

Little by little the confusion subsided.The emigration commissioner left;at six we were at last allowed some victuals.Unpacking my books and arranging them in my cabin filled up the remainder of the evening,save the time devoted to a couple of meditative pipes.The emigrants went to bed,and when,at about ten o'clock,I went up for a little time upon the poop,I heard no sound save the clanging of the clocks from the various churches of Gravesend,the pattering of rain upon the decks,and the rushing of the river as it gurgled against the ship's side.

Early next morning the cocks began to crow vociferously.We had about sixty couple of the oldest inhabitants of the hen-roost on board,which were intended for the consumption of the saloon passengers--a destiny which they have since fulfilled:young fowls die on shipboard,only old ones standing the weather about the line.Besides this,the pigs began grunting and the sheep gave vent to an occasional feeble bleat,the only expression of surprise or discontent which I heard them utter during the remainder of their existence,for now,alas!they are no more.Iremember dreaming I was in a farmyard,and woke as soon as it was light.

Rising immediately,I went on deck and found the morning calm and sulky--no rain,but everything very wet and very grey.There was Tilbury Fort,so different from Stanfield's dashing picture.There was Gravesend,which but a year before I had passed on my way to Antwerp with so little notion that I should ever leave it thus.Musing in this way,and taking a last look at the green fields of old England,soaking with rain,and comfortless though they then looked,I soon became aware that we had weighed anchor,and that a small steam-tug which had been getting her steam up for some little time had already begun to subtract a mite of the distance between ourselves and New Zealand.And so,early in the morning of Saturday,October 1,1859,we started on our voyage.

The river widened out hour by hour.Soon our little steam-tug left us.

A fair wind sprung up,and at two o'clock,or thereabouts,we found ourselves off Ramsgate.Here we anchored and waited till the tide,early next morning.This took us to Deal,off which we again remained a whole day.On Monday morning we weighed anchor,and since then we have had it on the forecastle,and trust we may have no further occasion for it until we arrive at New Zealand.