be light enough; and if not, we doze and talk alternately. At one,
a bell rings, and the stewardess comes down with a steaming dish of
baked potatoes, and another of roasted apples; and plates of pig’s
face, cold ham, salt beef; or perhaps a smoking mess of rare hot
collops. We fall to upon these dainties; eat as much as we can (we
have great appetites now); and are as long as possible about it.
If the fire will burn (it WILL sometimes) we are pretty cheerful.
If it won’t, we all remark to each other that it’s very cold, rub
our hands, cover ourselves with coats and cloaks, and lie down
again to doze, talk, and read (provided as aforesaid), until
dinner-time. At five, another bell rings, and the stewardess
reappears with another dish of potatoes – boiled this time – and
store of hot meat of various kinds: not forgetting the roast pig,
to be taken medicinally. We sit down at table again (rather more
cheerfully than before); prolong the meal with a rather mouldy
dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges; and drink our wine and
brandy-and-water. The bottles and glasses are still upon the
table, and the oranges and so forth are rolling about according to
their fancy and the ship’s way, when the doctor comes down, by
special nightly invitation, to join our evening rubber:
immediately on whose arrival we make a party at whist, and as it is
a rough night and the cards will not lie on the cloth, we put the
tricks in our pockets as we take them. At whist we remain with
exemplary gravity (deducting a short time for tea and toast) until
eleven o’clock, or thereabouts; when the captain comes down again,
in a sou’-wester hat tied under his chin, and a pilot-coat: making
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
the ground wet where he stands. By this time the card-playing is
over, and the bottles and glasses are again upon the table; and
after an hour’s pleasant conversation about the ship, the
passengers, and things in general, the captain (who never goes to
bed, and is never out of humour) turns up his coat collar for the
deck again; shakes hands all round; and goes laughing out into the
weather as merrily as to a birthday party.
As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity. This
passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at Vingt-et-un
in the saloon yesterday; and that passenger drinks his bottle of
champagne every day, and how he does it (being only a clerk),
nobody knows. The head engineer has distinctly said that there
never was such times – meaning weather – and four good hands are
ill, and have given in, dead beat. Several berths are full of
water, and all the cabins are leaky. The ship’s cook, secretly
swigging damaged whiskey, has been found drunk; and has been played
upon by the fire-engine until quite sober. All the stewards have
fallen down-stairs at various dinner-times, and go about with
plasters in various places. The baker is ill, and so is the
pastry-cook. A new man, horribly indisposed, has been required to
fill the place of the latter officer; and has been propped and
jammed up with empty casks in a little house upon deck, and
commanded to roll out pie-crust, which he protests (being highly
bilious) it is death to him to look at. News! A dozen murders on
shore would lack the interest of these slight incidents at sea.
Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we were
running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour, on the fifteenth
night, with little wind and a bright moon – indeed, we had made the
Light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in charge – when
suddenly the ship struck upon a bank of mud. An immediate rush on
deck took place of course; the sides were crowded in an instant;
and for a few minutes we were in as lively a state of confusion as
the greatest lover of disorder would desire to see. The
passengers, and guns, and water-casks, and other heavy matters,