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- CHAPTER XXIII.
AN UNACCOUNTABLE CABIN-PASSENGER, AND A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG LADY
As yet, I have said nothing special about the passengers we carried
out. But before making what little mention I shall of them, you must
know that the Highlander was not a Liverpool liner, or packet-ship,
plying in connection with a sisterhood of packets, at stated intervals,
between the two ports. No: she was only what is called a _regular
trader_ to Liverpool; sailing upon no fixed days, and acting very much
as she pleased, being bound by no obligations of any kind: though in
all her voyages, ever having New York or Liverpool for her destination.
Merchant vessels which are neither liners nor regular traders, among
sailors come under the general head of _transient ships;_ which implies
that they are here to-day, and somewhere else to-morrow, like Mullins’s
dog.
But I had no reason to regret that the Highlander was not a liner; for
aboard of those liners, from all I could gather from those who had
sailed in them, the crew have terrible hard work, owing to their
carrying such a press of sail, in order to make as rapid passages as
possible, and sustain the ship’s reputation for speed. Hence it is,
that although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in
the best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few
years of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their
constitutions— like robust young men, who live too fast in their
teens—and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of
Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for
the whaling business.
Thus, the ship that once carried over gay parties of ladies and
gentlemen, as tourists, to Liverpool or London, now carries a crew of
harpooners round Cape Horn into the Pacific. And the mahogany and
bird’s-eye maple cabin, which once held rosewood card-tables and
brilliant coffee-urns, and in which many a bottle of champagne, and
many a bright eye sparkled, _now_ accommodates a bluff Quaker captain
from Martha’s Vineyard; who, perhaps, while lying with his ship in the
Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, entertains a party of naked chiefs and
savages at dinner, in place of the packet-captain doing the honors to
the literati, theatrical stars, foreign princes, and gentlemen of
leisure and fortune, who generally talked gossip, politics, and
nonsense across the table, in transatlantic trips. The broad
quarter-deck, too, where these gentry promenaded, is now often choked
up by the enormous head of the sperm-whale, and vast masses of unctuous
blubber; and every where reeks with oil during the prosecution of the
fishery. Sic _transit gloria mundi!_ Thus departs the pride and glory
of packet-ships! _It is_ like a broken down importer of French silks
embarking in the soap-boning business.
So, not being a liner, the Highlander of course did not have very ample
accommodations for cabin passengers. I believe there were not more than
five or six state-rooms, with two or three berths in each. At any rate,
on this particular voyage she only carried out one regular
cabin-passenger; that is, a person previously unacquainted with the
captain, who paid his fare down, and came on board soberly, and in a
business-like manner with his baggage.
He was an extremely little man, that solitary cabin-passenger—the
passenger who came on board in a business-like manner with his baggage;
never spoke to any one, and the captain seldom spoke to him.
Perhaps he was a deputy from the Deaf and Dumb Institution in New York,
going over to London to address the public in pantomime at Exeter Hall
concerning the signs of the times.
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