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Bumboatmen, about the bows, were offering shells, and oranges, and bananas; and newsboys, and peddlers, and tract distributors were squeezing about with their wares among the passengers. I had confidence in their instinct; there had been no such numbers of them the previous evenings, and I made up my mind, although past seven o'clock, that the "St. Charles" would not let her fires go down again.
I had made out to save, when taken, about twenty dollars, and with that I could buy from the bumboats, that were permitted to come alongside, bread, fruit, etc.; but, Sir, the bumboatmen were of the same kidney as the officers of the Jersey and we got nothing from them without paying through the nose for it, and I soon found the bottom of my purse; after which I fared no better than the rest.
From the number of consumers on board a vessel, even of moderate size, this business is profitable to the small traders who ply it, and who from time immemorial have been known as bumboatmen.
The eagerness for trade among the bumboatmen, actual and expectant, sometimes becomes a nuisance; in their efforts to be first they form a mob quite beyond the control of the ship, the gangways and channels of which they none the less surround and grab, deaf to all remonstrance by words, however forcible.
It was a harvest day for the Montego Bay "bumboatmen." Though we bought the fruits without hesitation, we bit into them gingerly, for, to most of us, many of them were strange. Tom LeValley brought me a mango and said that I could have it if I would sample it and tell what it was like. I accepted, for I had not been lucky enough to get near a boat to buy for myself.
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