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Updated: June 11, 2025
The mate had clambered halfway up the main ratlines, and was looking earnestly to windward. Two or three of the crew on the forecastle were gazing in the same direction. The group of cabin-passengers on the quarterdeck, following their eyes, saw what appeared to be another low shore on the opposite bow. "Why, there's another coast there!" said Mrs. Markham.
The cabin-passengers of the Highlander numbered some fifteen in all; and to protect this detachment of gentility from the barbarian incursions of the "wild Irish" emigrants, ropes were passed athwart-ships, by the main-mast, from side to side: which defined the boundary line between those who had paid three pounds passage-money, from those who had paid twenty guineas.
For two or three days after sailing, the thick, rainy spring weather kept all below, except a few hardy gentlemen who crowded together on the lee of the smoke-stack, and kept up a stubborn cheerfulness on a very small capital of comfort. There were few cabin-passengers on board, but the usual crowd of emigrants in the steerage. Mrs. Lawrie's face had grown calmer and colder during these years.
He grew acquainted with the remainder of the cabin-passengers, at least those who arrived before the final bustle began; and kept bringing his sister such little pieces of news as he could collect. "Maggie, they say we are likely to have a good start, and a fine moonlight night." Away again he went. "I say, Maggie, that's an uncommonly pretty girl come on board, with those old people in black.
And the cabin-passengers themselves were the most urgent in having this regulation maintained. Lucky would it be for the pretensions of some parvenus, whose souls are deposited at their banker's, and whose bodies but serve to carry about purses, knit of poor men's heartstrings, if thus easily they could precisely define, ashore, the difference between them and the rest of humanity.
This was particularly true on board the Chalmetta, for she was crowded to nearly double her complement of cabin-passengers, and the space usually devoted to exercise was too much crowded to render it very pleasant. When, therefore, the Chalmetta touched at a wood-yard, after leaving Baton Rouge, the passengers hurried on shore, to enjoy the novelty of an unconfined promenade.
The ship was well officered by Englishmen, was scrupulously neat and clean; there was no loud talk or reiterated orders in its management; the effective arm of discipline was felt but not seen. To observe the Chinese passengers was a source of some amusement. In fine weather they crowded the forward and lower deck aft, not being permitted to infringe upon the cabin-passengers' deck.
Why she had not applied for a first-class passage, why she had no trunks, they could not guess, for though she had little money in her pocket she had that about her which would have fetched it. 'We buried her at sea, continued the captain. 'A young parson, one of the cabin-passengers, read the burial-service over her, I remember well.
That morning all six were invited to the quarter-deck, and reviewed by the cabin-passengers, the ladies manifesting particular interest in them, as they always do concerning twins, which some of them show in public parks and gardens, by stopping to look at them, and questioning their nurses.
"And were you all born at one time?" asked an old lady, letting her eye run in wonder along the even file of white heads. "Indeed, an' we were," said Teddy; "wasn't we, mother?" Many more questions were asked and answered, when a collection was taken up for their benefit among these magnanimous cabin-passengers, which resulted in starting all six boys in the world with a penny apiece.
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