sing towards a sob; and his friend might
reassure him, reason with him, joke at him--all was in vain, and the old
cry came back, "The ship's going down!" There was something panic and
catching in the emotion of his tones; and I saw in a clear flash what an
involved and hideous tragedy was a disaster to an emigrant ship. If this
whole parishful of people came no more to land, into how many houses
would the newspaper carry woe, and what a great part of the web of our
corporate human life would be rent across for ever!

The next morning when I came on deck I found a new world indeed. The
wind was fair; the sun mounted into a cloudless heaven; through great
dark blue seas the ship cut a swathe of curded foam. The horizon was
dotted all day with companionable sails, and the sun shone pleasantly on
the long, heaving deck.

We had many fine-weather diversions to beguile the time. There was a
single chess-board and a single pack of cards. Sometimes as many as
twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. Feats of dexterity,
puzzles for the intelligence, some arithmetical, some of the same order
as the old problem of the fox and goose and cabbage, were always
welcome; and the latter, I observed, more popular as well as more
conspicuously well done than the former. We had a regular daily
competition to guess the vessel's progress; and twelve o'clock, when the
result was published in the wheel-house, came to be a moment of
considerable interest. But the interest was unmixed. Not a bet was laid
upon our guesses. From the Clyde to Sandy Hook I never heard a wager
offered or taken. We had, besides, romps in plenty. Puss in the Corner,
which we had rebaptised, in more manly style, Devil and four Corners,
was my own favourite game; but there were many who preferred another,
the humour of which was to box a person's ears until he found out who
had cuffed him.

This Tuesday morning we were all delighted with the change of weather,
and in the highest possible spirits. We got in a cluster like bees,
sitting between each other's feet under lee of the deck-houses. Stories
and laughter went around. The children climbed about the shrouds. White
faces appeared for the first time, and began to take on colour from the
wind. I was kept hard at work making cigarettes for one amateur after
another, and my less than moderate skill was heartily admired. Lastly,
down sat the fiddler in our midst and began to discourse his reels, and
jigs, and bal