out, far out on the mighty sea, a large vessel makes her way gallantly over the billows—homeward bound.
she is a royal mail steamer from the southern hemisphere—the trident—and a right royal vessel she looks with her towering iron hull, and her taper masts, and her two thick funnels, and her trim rigging, and her clean decks—for she has an awning spread over them, to guard from smoke as well as from sun.
there is a large family on board of the trident, and, like all other large families, its members display marked diversities of character. they also exhibit, like not a few large families, remarkable diversities of temper. among them there are several human magnets with positive and negative poles, which naturally draw together. there are also human flints and steels which cannot come into contact without striking fire.
when the trident got up steam, and bade adieu to the southern cross, there was no evidence whatever of the varied explosives and combustibles which she carried in her after-cabin. the fifty or sixty passengers who waved kerchiefs, wiped their eyes, and blew their noses, at friends on the receding shore, were unknown to each other; they were intent on their own affairs. when obliged to jostle each other they were all politeness and urbanity.
after the land had sunk on the horizon the intro-circumvolutions of a large family, or rather a little world, began. there was a birth on board, an engagement, ay, and a death; yet neither the interest of the first, nor the romance of the second, nor the solemnity of the last, could check for more than a few hours the steady development of the family characteristics of love, modesty, hate, frivolity, wisdom, and silliness.
a proportion of the passengers were, of course, nobodies, who aspired to nothing greater than to live and let live, and who went on the even tenor of their way, without much change, from first to last. some of them were somebodies who, after a short time, began to expect the recognition of that fact. there were ambitious bodies who, in some cases, aimed too high, and there were unpretending-bodies who frequently aimed too low. there were also selfish-bodies who, of course, thought only of themselves—with, perhaps, a slight passing reference to those among the after-cabin passengers who could give them pleasure, and there were self-forgetting-bodies who turned their thoughts frequently on the ship, the crew, the sea, the solar system, the maker of the universe. these also thought of their fellow-passengers in the fore-cabin, who of course had a little family or world of their own, with its similar joys, and sins, and sorrows, before the mast; and there were uproarious-bodies who kept the little world lively—sometimes a little too lively.
as the royal mail steamer rushed out to sea and was tossed on the ocean’s breast, these human elements began to mix and effervesce and amalgamate, or fizz, burst, and go off, like squibs and crackers.
there was a mrs pods with three little girls, and a mrs tods with two little boys, whose first casual glance at each other was transmuted into a glare of undying and unreasoning hate. these ladies were exceptions to the rule of general urbanity before mentioned. both had fiery faces, and each read the other through and through at a glance. there was a miss bluestocking who charmed some people, irritated others, frightened a few, and caused many to sneer. her chief friend among the males was a young man named mr weakeyes, who had a small opinion of himself and a very receptive mind. miss troolove, among the ladies, was her chief friend. the strange misnomers which one meets with in society were also found in the little world in that steamer—that royal mail steamer we should say—for, while we turn aside for a brief period to condescend upon these particulars, we would not have the reader forget that they have an indirect bearing on the main thread of our tale.
one misnamed lady was a miss mist, who, instead of being light, airy, and ethereal, as she ought to have been, weighed at least twelve stone six. but she sang divinely, was a great favourite with the young people on board, and would have been very much missed indeed if she had not been there. there was also a mr stout, who was the tallest and thinnest man in the ship.
on the other hand there were some whose names had been obviously the result of a sense of propriety in some one. among the men who were rabidly set on distinguishing themselves in one way or another was a major beak. now, why was it that this major’s nose was an aquiline of the most outrageous dimensions? surely no one would argue that the nose grew to accommodate the name. is it not more probable—nay, certain—that the name grew to accommodate the nose? of course when major beak was born he was a minor, and his nose must have been no better than a badly-shaped button or piece of putty; but the major’s father had owned a tremendous aquiline nose, which at birth had also been a button, and so on we can proceed backwards until we drive the beaks into that remote antiquity where historical fact begins and mythological theory terminates—that period when men were wont, it is supposed, to name each other intelligently with reference to personal characteristic or occupation.
so, too, mr bright—a hearty good-natured fellow, who drew powerfully to major beak and hated miss bluestocking—possessed the vigorous frame, animated air, and intelligent look which must have originated his name. but why go on? every reader must be well acquainted with the characters of mr fiery and mr stiff, and mrs dashington, and her niece miss squeaker, and colonel blare who played the cornet, and lieutenant limp who sang tenor, and dr bassoon who roared bass, and mrs silky, who was all things to all men, besides being everything by turns and nothing long; and lady tower and miss gentle, and mr blurt and miss dumbbelle.
suffice it to say that after a week or two the effervescing began to systematise, and the family became a living and complex electrical machine, whose sympathetic poles drew and stuck together, while the antagonistic poles kept up a steady discharge of sparks.
then there arose a gale which quieted the machine a little, and checked the sparkling flow of wit and humour. when, during the course of the gale, a toppling billow overbalanced itself and fell inboard with a crash that nearly split the deck open, sweeping two of the quarterboats away, mr blurt, sitting in the saloon, was heard to exclaim:—
“’pon my word, it’s a terrible gale—enough almost to make a fellow think of his sins.”
to which mrs tods, who sat beside him, replied, with a serious shake of her head, that it was indeed a very solemn occasion, and cast a look, not of undying hate but of gentle appeal at mrs pods, who sat opposite to her. and that lady, so far from resenting the look as an affront, met her in a liberal spirit; not only admitted that what mrs tods had said was equally just and true, but even turned her eyes upward with a look of resignation.
well was it for mrs pods that she did so, for her resigned eyes beheld the globe of the cabin lamp pitched off its perch by a violent lurch and coming straight at her. thus she had time to bow to circumstances, and allow the missile to pass over her head into the bosom of lady tower, where it was broken to atoms. the effect of mutual concession was so strong on mrs pods and mrs tods, that the former secretly repented having wished that one of mrs tods’ little sons might fall down the hatchway and get maimed for life, while the latter silently regretted having hoped that one of mrs pods’ little girls might fall overboard and be half-drowned.
but the storm passed away and the effervescence returned—though not, it is pleasing to add, with so much pungency as before. thus, night and day, the steamer sped on over the southern seas, across the mystic line, and into the northern hemisphere, with the written records, hopes, commands, and wishes of a continent in the mail-bags in her hold, and leaving a beautiful milky-way behind her.
but there were more than letters and papers in these mail-bags. there were diamonds! not indeed those polished and glittering gems whose proper resting-place is the brow of beauty, but those uncut pebbles that are turned up at the mines, which the ignorant would fling away or give to their children as playthings, but for which merchants and experts would give hundreds and thousands of pounds. a splendid prize that royal mail steamer would have been for the buccaneers of the olden time, but happily there are no buccaneers in these days—at least not in civilised waters. a famous pirate had, however, set his heart on those diamonds—even old neptune himself.
this is how it happened.
