LADIES' COLUMN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6496, 27 May 1899, Page 3

LADIES' COLUMN.

..':■-■ SOME- OCEANGOING tYPESr '■■-- -!'••' ■ {Molteurne Argus.) ' ' ■ '■'■■:' ' " tut?L°/ blact -» throbbing keel, Whispered converae near the wheel, In the brilliant tropic night Uross that rules the Southern Sky! bfcars that sweep, and wheel, and fly, ■ Hear the Lover's Litany,Love like ours can never die.' " ■...'.■ ■- —Kipling. "Yes," sud the pretty girl meditetively,. «• I . am af TOi d it won't -be half so jolly travelling by the P. and 0. boats as. i£.. used to be. You see.^the officers used to do such a lot towards making things agreeable for everybody;, and now, by the new regulation, they are not allowed to talk to the lady passeftat a^' Ideally do not know how we shall get oh without them. One gets a great many different kinds of people on board ship, you know, but, after all, as ; Tennyson said, the individual perishes, but' the type survives." " Tennyson did not exactly say 1 tHst ; but no. matter, tell use some of the tvpfes/- one ventures to interpolate. Well," said the pretty girl, "first of all there s the ship's widow. The most characteristic specimen that I ever met happened to be a grass widow, but the ordinary kind are regular travellers, too. My widow was a real beauty. I came out with her a fewvoyages ago, and had -a good opportunity of studying her. She had a maid with her, a i j i a little dau e n <«r of about ten. The old ladies on board pumped the small child systematically, and gradually pierced together a wondrous tale to the effect that the grass widow and her husband did not <ret on very well together, so" he allowed her £3000 a year, and she used to spend her time mostly in travelling from London to Sydney and back. She used to lie in a long chair all the afternoon, beautifully dressed, with stockings and shoes to match her frock, and she generally had five or six men hanging round her. In the evening, however, the number was reduced to one. He was one of the officers; of course, and the handsomest man on board. They sat regularly just behind the bridge, and fie played the guitar and sang to her. Gradually, the voyage went on, the old ladies began to talk about her more and more. Ai last we got to Albany, and at six o'clock in themorning, when the men were all on deck in their sleeping things and overcoats, my beautiful widow went up and joined them. She wore a white cashmere dressing gown, trimmed with swansdown, and a little hood of the same, and she had white satin quilled bathslippers on. her feet and no stockings. The old ladies were all poking their heads out of the portholes , underneath gazing at the land. They had their hair in curl papers, and looked such dear old frights. But that exploit settled the widow, and she was only spoken of with bated breath afterwards. I'll tell you one characteristic little incident about her. We had some theatricals in the saloon one evening, and they were playing 'Broken Vows,' with, the widow in the adventuress's part, and a charming little girl as the ingenue. No flowers were obtainable on board ship, but a youthful admirer of the ingenue got the cook to make him a beautiful bouquet of artificial flowers out of white and red paper. He handed" it up with a blushing smile, but the ingenue was too' shy to take it, arid the widow came down to the footlights and quietly annexed it with such a soft little downcast . look of thanks. Oh, she was a daisy ! I met her again a voyage or two afterwards, but I hardly recognised her. Her beautiful auburn hair had turned quite black. "Then there is <the ship's pretty girl. There were several of them on board the ]ast time that I came out, and they all had a very good time. Of course, at the beginning of the voyage everybody is desperately seasick, but, after a couple of days, they begin to comer out of their cabins, and look round, a bit. One of the sixteen-year-old contingent took a great fancy for the doctor, who was certainly a very nice young man, quite fair, with curly hair, you know, but she was hard put to it to find an expedient for' scraping acquaintance with him. At last she hit upon a desperate plan, and she deliberately cut her finger in order to have an excuse for seeking his professional assistance. He was exactly the right sort of man to be a ship's doctor, for he used to make love to all the girls impartially, and they used to tolerate him because he lent them his little methylated spirit lamp to heat thencurling tongs with.' The company would i not allow any passenger to have a methylated spirit lamp, but the doctor used to lend his own lamp to his favourites, under the most solemn promises that they would never take it out of the basin. You've no idea, being a man, how awful it is to have to depend on curling pins, arid I can tell you that the girls used to appreciate that doctor as if he were Aladdin:" "Did they flirt much?" "Of course, they did. Every girl flirts on board ship, even those who never dream of such a thing on laml I remember one demure little .thing, who was always above suspicion, until one evening Vhen she made a slight miscalculation of locality. She was sitting out with a beardless youth on deck, and he was endeavouring to point out the Southern Cross to her, but she became so excited during the search that he actually tried to kiss her. Of course, that was unpardonable, and she boxed his ears. No one would ever have known a word about it if it had not been for the officer of the watch, who was on the bridge immediately above them. He was an interested observer of the whole of the little comedy, and he told it to a lady friend as a deadly secret. I heard it the next day at lunch, and before afternoon tea-time the luckless young astronomer was that Mrs Mala-prop would call the cynosure of all eyes. One or two of the girls used to go right up into the bows of the ship, where they were strictly forbidden to go. It was much nicer' there, because one could sit down behind a big coil of rope and admire the stars without fear of being detected by an officer on the bridge." . , • . . >- "What about tlie old ladies?" " Oh, we had quite a number of them on my last voyage- The dear old things ! They used to sit about on deck a good deal with big straw hats tied under their chins, and they talked each other's heads off. The Australian old ladies usajd to get hold of the English old ladies and frighten them about Australian servants. Day after day they told them how to manage servants in Australia, and what to give them to eat. The poor old English ladies must have felt as though they were going among cannibals. I remember one old lady, who was a good representative of a well-marked type. She was a ' companion ' in charge of two girls, and she was seasick for, the first fortnight of the voyage off and on. In her lucid intervals she was in the habit of enlarging upon the blessings of total abstinence, and she informed the assembled company several times a day that she had never tasted alcohol in her life. She was under the doctor's care, poor thing, and she took the medicine that he sent to her dutifully every morning. It was a gin cocktail, specially j ordered for her "from ' the- bar, and she was j always bothering the doctor for the prescription;" because she said she had never I taken anything that did her half so much good. The matrons became' very metho-. dical in their habits. They used' to sew on deck in the morning, sleep in theie cabins in the afternoon, and pla.y penny " Nap " in the saloon in the evening. They ralk?d about Australian servants and the widow in between times." . I " Are all the lady passengers so affable and sociable ? " : "Well, now, I must admit thai there is generally an 'unapproachable' or two — the people, you know, who are grieved to think that anyone else exists besides themselves — but they arc only the exceptions, after all, that prove the rule. I remember a young married woman with her husband and brother-in-law, who travelled out from London to Aden, and never spoke to a soul ex* cept each other. It got about, in the mysterious way that things do get about on board ship, that they were going, to stop ■with the Viceroy in India, I hope he found . them more amusing than^ we did.> But people,- as a rule, are jolly enpngh; at sea;"

If the majority of passengers were like that ; married lady and her husband and her brother-in-law, I'd like to send my worst enemy for a trip on a P. and O. boat where the passengers would not talk to her, and L^e:ire;ls^^i)wiuldi npt bg allb^eA'iolfcalkllai;: | the officers. Well, I must be toddling now. I Good-bye." ; .•>/..- . '