"As the
detachment marched out to the lively music of the band, a little boy,
dressed in a brown alpaca suit, having a diagonal band with large
white buttons across it, and wearing a straw hat, ran to the side of a
surly-looking man whose dark brows beetled over his bilious-looking
eyes, and handed him his gloves, clean and nice to put on. He
took them, looked sulkily at the little fellow, and, as the officer's
attention was engaged elsewhere, slashed the child across the eyes
with them.
Some of the onlookers called him ugly names, but the boy gulped back
the tears, and marched along beside the company, carrying a little
basket his mother had given him of handy comforts for the first few
days of sea-sickness. She was an experienced traveller, having
been born in the Bermudas, and since then generally out on some
foreign station. The man we noticed was her third husband, the
boy the son of her second. She was a neat little body, evidently
the senior of this man, and as evidently in delicate health."
(p.3)
"In
the midst of [a severe storm rounding Cape Horn] the word was passed
that a woman had been taken ill, for her hour had come. O God!
in such a scene as this!...
Men carried
her to the hospital as best they could, where she was lashed into a
cot, and amidst the turmoil of the elements a young life was ushered
into this world, and then two lives were ushered out. The surly
man we noticed before was left to his own devices, which were, at
present, to get all the grog he could from his neighbours and kick his
stepson whenever the child ventured near him." [p. 37]
The child,
"Billy", is looked after by kindly Mrs. Middleton (although
I find no record of a sapper by this name).
"The storm seemed to increase in violence, and there lay two
still forms lashed to a cot, ready for burial as soon as the hatches
could be raised with safety. Billy crept in on all fours to look at
them whenever he got a chance; it made him feel less desolate."
[p. 38]
Two days later, during a lull in the storm: "The two bodies were
arranged on a plank over the ship's side, and amidst a solemn silence
of voices some of the beautiful Burial Service was read. There
was a grating slide, a splash, a wild cry from a lonely child, and -
'Rest for the weary.' Poor little Billy crept away to the dog-kennel
unnoticed, and clasping his arms around the neck of one of his canine
friends he cried himself to sleep."[p. 39]
