The Traveller.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 230, 5 February 1876, Page 22

The Traveller.

VOYAGING PER "P. AND O." (From the Special Correspondent of the Daily Neivs of November 2.) Suez Canal, October 22. I think it is Sam Slick who observes that " human nature is pretty much the same everywhere." But there are conditions under which human nature has, as it were, its mask on ; and he must be a very discerning student who can penetrate the disguise. On board a " P. and O." steamer, however, after the first stiffness has worn off, and the passengers have become at least in a measure familiarised to each other, human nature, with its mask off, is to be studied so easily that he who runs, were running indeed practicable onboard ship,may read. The study in endless varied phases lasts from earliest morning until long after the quartermaster goes round to extinguish the lights. No matter how early you may rise, you will find tramping the deck, af if for a wager, the muscular Christian who combines missionary enterprise with a zeal for keeping himself in training. Up till eight o'clock the lex nonscripta of the ship prohibits ladies from showing, and the males like to disport themselves in the airiest of attire. Pyjamas, a bath towel over the shoulders, and bare feet, constitute the quarter-deck costume at this period. The Griffins smoke themselves into premature headaches, while the men of experience take the " constitutional" which later in the day becomes impossible, because of heat, chairs, and miscellaneous children. It is now that the daily-recurring bath difficulty asserts itself. With four or five bath-rooms among some sixty passengers, not even the

regulation that no man shall occupy a bathroom for more than ten minutes can duly secure to all the desiderated accommodation. Dodges of amusing yet irritating acuteness are resorted to, and all sorts of attempts are made to circumvent the fair play of the queue. The placid, elderly gentlemen who chooses to spend half-an-hour in his bath, and who quietly ignores the hammering at the door and the running fire of objurgation at the hands _ of the savage expectants outside, is hated with the bitter hatred that only petty provocations can engender. We all know which of the ladies to expect first of a morning on the quarter-deck. Make way there for the plump, chubby matron of a certain age, who makes her way from the companion with a gait something between a trot and a strut. She is on duty thus early—as indeed she remains under arms all day long—to detect abuses, supervise her own set, wither with majestic dignity and biting words the other sex, keep the captain up to his work, see that the maids and the ayahs are doing thenduty, inspect the babies, prescribe for the ailin"-, lay down the law for the proceedings of the day, and take the preliminary steps for a drumhead court-martial of acrid matrons on hapless beings against whom rests the suspicion of overnight flirtation. This estimable lady is abundantly capable of sailing the Channel Fleet, and is understood, through the vicarious instrumentality of a husband, to command a regiment of native troops. The captain, long since awed into submission by a judicious mixture of supercilious dignity and stony condecension, obeys obsequiously her behests, and the ladies of the ship tremble under her sway. She roots the last lingerer in pyjamas with a glance, and then the nurses "turn out the guard" to her, while she bobs bi-iskly along the line of babies, demanding information as to the teething of this one, the feverish symptoms of that one, and the appetite of the other one. The laches of the smoker are next investigated by this interesting amalgam of Mrs. Bute Crawley, the Old Campaigner of "The Newcomes," and Mrs. Major O'Dowd, of "Vanity Fair." For she it is who has organised among the ladies petition after petition to the captain to curtail the privileges of the lovers of tobacco, who thus have beeen so badgered from pillar to post that they threaten mutiny, and the preparation of an address of respectful sympathy to the colonel, officers, and men of the regiment to which this matron belongs, on the occasion of her resumption of its command. Other mrtrons having by this time mustered, the era of courts-martial and scandal sets in. Woe betide the hapless innocent little woman whose crime it is to have a winsome face, violet eyes, and a laugh like the ripple of a brook over its stones, and who was so regardless of the Mrs. Grundy code as to give the evening to a tete-a-tete conversation with a person of the other sex. The Mesdames Grnndy are grim, and have inexhaustible batteries of stone wherewith to sling at their sisters, whose sin it is to be pleasant and engaging. At nine o'clock the breakfast bell rings, and Mrs. Grundy, her appetite stimulated by the conscientious performance of duty, leads the way down to the saloon. The news of the night circulates in little ripples up and down the long table. It is told how we passed Cape So-and-so at such and such an hour, how that baby in the next cabin screamed the live-long hour, how the captain has oracularly remarked that we were lucky to have escaped that monster wave, in that last gale, and whether heat is worse or better to-day than yesterday. This lady has seen a cockroach, and shudders again as she tells of the dreadful apparition. The gentleman over the way descants on curries, and the clown of the ship brings off successfully for the third time, the upset of his tea-cup into his waistcoat pocket, and laughs consumedly at tais most exquisite jest. Perhaps it is just after breakfast that our quarter-deck is seen at its best. Ours is a dressy ship, and in this matter the "Old Campaigner" herself, whose invariable costume is a Spartan garment of the material apparently of bath towel, has in vain issued sumptuary edicts. That long-suffering and much-enduring man, the fourth officer, has been driven to the verge of acute mania by the incessant demand upon him for boxes from the hold. But if he is a man of taste, verily he hath his reward in the contemplation of the piquant and recherche toilets, which are the result of his toils. Not rare on our quarter-deck are the rustle of silk and the sheen of satin, and of the morning toilets, of cunning admixture of hues, and all of a flutter with frills and ruching and knots of ribbon, the power fails one to tell, nor are the capacities of the narrator equal to the hats. There is a little promenading, and then the groups form and settle down. Of course we run into coteries, and about each coterie there is something distinctive. The Grundy _ ladies keep together pretty closely, using their eyes, and, you may be sure, their tongues, with much keenness, and occasionally detaching a vigilant patrol on a scouting expedition to note and report upon suspected outlying cases of flirtation. The " Old Campaigner" makes her rounds at frequent intervals, and at the sight of her, light words of badinage freeze upon the lips, couples who have been sitting close draw apart, and the lady of the pair suddenly becomes apprehensive that she must go and look for something in her cabin. Then the mothers with tender infants form another group, or rather fortress, the outworks of which consist of a circumvallation of playful and very noisy children. The lady of highest rank in the ship forms a group by herself, if the expression is permissible ; she sits apart, stately, handsome, courteous, but reserved, having always before her cold, keen, blue eyes the great fact that she is the spouse of a lieutenantgeneral, a K.C.8., and a commander-in-chief. The pleasant Irish girl with the frank face and the dimples always has a little circle of admirers about her. The determined little woman with the bright eyes and the nez retrousse, who is gallantly on her way alone to meet her husband at the furthest naval station in the China seas, has learned the

happy knack of being merry and wise at the same time. We have recently emancipated schoolgirls, luxuriating in, while half afraid of, their newly-acquired liberty, and to parody the couplet, " anxious to flirt, while yet afraid to spoon." Pluckily against the Grundy contingent holds her own the little woman with the unmistakeably hair and the general aspect of an opera boaffe actress, strong in her faculty of demurely sharp repartee, and the further buckler of a couple of children. The ship has its fair share of male types. All like and respect the young English divine, who, with a creditable Cambridge career behind him, and a sure prospect of home preferment before him, has counted all this but as dross, and is on his way to the weary, thankless task of mission work in China. We have our other missionary, too, a worthy man in his way, but of quite another stamp ; tall, gaunt, and rugged, with the accent of the Salt Market, and all the unction of the Scotch Kirk, a very Boanerges on the quarter-deck at the Sunday evening service. We should be nowhere without our colonel, handsome, chivalrous, and courteous, able to spare, fi-om his devoted assiduity to his pretty wife, those civilities to other ladies, young and old, pretty and plain alike, the kindly spirit of which renders them so acceptable. Of ladies' men we have galore ; the lanky middle-aged rattle, whose faculty for talking nonsense, appropriate and inappropriate, is inborn, not acquired —the queer being who suddenly produces unexpected dogs and cats from his voluminous pockets, and places carrots in the embrace of his friends, with intent to occasion them a pleasing surprise when they awake. The easy-going man, who, when off duty at whist, disseminates indiscriminately attentions not invariably welcome, their welcomeness or the reverse being a matter of equal indifference to him—the amiable, dapper, little tea planter in embryo, who is a kind of fetch-and-carry spaniel for the collective ladyhood, and who, when not engaged in turning over music or holding a skein of silk to be unwound, concentrates his energy on the athletic sport of embroidering a pair of slippers —the male tell-tale of the ship, who listens attentively to the talk and gup among his male fellows, and reports the same to the ladies of the Grundy faction —the pretty man with the white teeth and the neat little moustache, who considers conversation a superfluity, and pays his debt of sociality in smiles while he fondles his moustache—the bluff, burly man, with the rotund voice and the good opinion of himself, in whose noisy jokes occasionally lurks an objectionable double entendre —the tall ineffable, who seems to consider that in addressing a lady he is bestowing favor and patronage —the feeble being, whose aspirations after prandial sociality are interfered with by the circumstance of his collapse and ignominious retreat from table when roast duck makes its appearance there—the sententious gentleman, whose voice only makes itself heard after dinner, and not often then —and many others, to characterise whom, owing to their lack of distinctive character, would be impossible. But there must not be omitted the quiet, self-contained, middle-aged man who holds in utter contempt Mrs. Grundy and all her clique, who has a habit of doing what seemeth unto himself good, as long as his own sense of rectitude is not ruffled ; and who, therefore, is the bete noir of the cavillers. Talk, playing at working, and playing at reading, while away for the women the forenoon ; the men have the additional joys of smoking and chess-playing. After tiffin, a good deal of sleep is got through, and not a little writing. Some people on board ship are always writing ; you would imagine that for them a post went out at least twice a day, and the only hypothesis on which to account for their industry is that they must keep voluminous diaries. From five to six there is walking up and down for an appetite, which, judging from the performance at din-ner-time, proves in most cases an effectual recipe. After dinner, in the quiet cool gloaming, there is more walking for a space ; and then the mnsical people gather around the piano on the deck, and the night air is laden with sounds more or less sweet. An enterprising gentleman started the idea of a "penny reading ; indeed the programme was all drawn up, but just as the seats for this funcion were being arranged, someone struck up a waltz on the piano, the tarantula spider bit those who were to have been the audience, and the penny reading seems to have been postponed to the Greek Calends. But dancing or no dancing, the day proper of the ship comes to a close at ten o'clock punctually, and half an hour after the lights are extinguished in the sleeping cabins. She must be a brave woman indeed who dares to remain on deck long after the. former hour, in the face of the fact that the " old campaigner" makes her final inquisitorial round a quarter after.