Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/715

708 the blue ugly over it were disappearing down the companion-ladder, all the gentlemen who had been quizzing the little black figure fishing, simultaneously rushed over to the other side of the deck to look at a boat a long distance off, which appeared to be having a very uncomfortable time of it; amongst the rough waves there, for the breeze that was filling our sails and blowing us straight on our way to Melbourne had the contrary effect on the boat; however, it at last got near enough for us to count seven men in it, and shortly after it was rocking about in the foam alongside our ship, whilst the men were catching hold of ropes thrown to them, and making it fast to her side. Then two gentlemen came scrambling up out of the boat, and the instant they alighted on deck, mobs of people from all parts of the ship surrounded them, so that it was quite impossible for me to get near them; however, recollecting that the rest of the men were sitting in the boat alongside, I hastened down the companion-ladder into the cuddy at once, to have a look at them from one of the port-holes. They were rough-looking fellows, with a quantity of hair about their heads and faces that wanted trimming sadly.

“I’ll be bound they are all ticket-of-leave men,” said a young man near me.

“How thin and downcast that one looks with a wide-awake on,” said a lady, quite pathetically.

Sundry bottles of Guinness’s stout, and bundles of biscuits and cheese were being lowered into the boat by “fast young fellows” from their cabin windows, with ropes, no doubt with the view of setting the men talking; but it had quite the contrary effect—pulling against the fresh breeze had evidently sharpened their appetites—not a word could be got out of them—they sat devouring the biscuits and cheese ravenously; at last, a man from a porthole near the forecastle bawled out at the top of his voice:

“I say, master! Hollo! ho! one of you in the boat I means. What’s the price of bread in Melbourne—can you tell us?”

“Bread? I’m blest if I knows!” said the master of the boat, eating all the time; then, turning to his companion, he said, quite leisurely, “Bill, what’s bread a-loaf? You’ve got a hen and chicks to feed, so I ’spose you knows summut about it: jest tell that hungry chap up there, will you?”

“Bread’s four-and-six a quartern,” shouted Bill, with his hands to his mouth for want of a speaking-trumpet: then he knocked off the neck of a bottle with his knife, and drank off the contents out of a pannikin.

I don’t know what effect that information had on the poor man who had asked for it, but I know it caused an immense sensation amongst some of my fellow-passengers: they withdrew their heads from the portholes, and quite a discussion took place about it.

“lf bread is so dear, what will other things be?” said they: and, indeed, for some time after bread was in everybody’s mouth.

“What a dreadful noise those people are making about bread,” said a gentleman who had been reading at the table, but who was now leaning out of the porthole at which I was standing; “I was reading a—a beautiful thing of Byron’s, and a—and they quite disturbed me.”

He was twisting and twirling the long hairs of his thin whiskers into tiny ringlets all the time he was speaking.

“How plainly that curved line of sea,” said I, pointing to the horizon, “demonstrates the fact that we are sailing over the surface of a vast globe.”

“Ah, yes!” said he; “wonderfully—does it not? a—

Bless me, how those fellows in the boat below there are looking up at me,” said he, stopping suddenly in his recitation. “I suppose they-er—they think I’m mad. I’ll just speak—a—Melbourne is a nice sort-er—sort of a place to live in, I suppose.”

The man in the boat said quite briskly in reply, “Well, your honour, I thinks it a werry fine place—Melbourne is—werry, I calls it—lots of employ—good pay for it, too; the work’s pretty hard, though.” Then he whispered something into his companion’s ear, and they both burst out laughing.

“Fish, did you say?” shouted Bill, to the third-class passenger, with whom he had been keeping up quite a spirited conversation. “Vy, there’s shoals in this here water, if we’d only time to ketch some on ’em.”

The portholes being again blocked up with people’s head, the men in the boat pitched the empty bottles a long way off into the sea, and gave themselves up to answering the numerous questions of all kinds put to them. They told the full particulars of several horrible murders that had taken place in Melbourne and at Ballarat; and how some men, coming down from the diggings to sell their piles of hard-earned goldin Melbourne, had been attacked by bushrangers on the road, and lamed for life, as well as robbed by them.

“The willains sent a wolley of bullets into their hankles afore they left ’em,” said he.

“Oh, the wretches! how very shocking!” exclaimed the ladies.

“I s’pose as how you’re all pretty sound on board this here wessel,” said the thin man with a wide-awake on, in a tone of voice that implied it was an exertion for him to speak. “Cos, jest round that ’ere corner, t’other side of them rocks, there’s a wessel what’s performing quarantine, they calls it. She’s a New Yorker, and was a bringing us nine hunder an’ fifteen young vimin, all hemigrunts; but howsomdiver, one hunder an’ three on ’em has died of typhus ’fore they got halfway out, and they tells me they’ve got sixty-four on ’em down with it now at this werry moment. The co’pses they throws overboard is terrible!”

Three wrecked vessels, lying shattered on the rocks we were passing, new attracted every one’s gaze: the waves were dashing up against them as if angry with them for being there. Not a word was spoken by any one of us, but when they were nearly out of sight the man in the boat said: