Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure, - [sight word readers .txt] 📗

Doctors tell us that change of air is usually beneficial, often necessary, nearly always agreeable. Relying on the wisdom of this opinion, we propose now to give the reader who has followed us thus far a change of air—by shifting the scene to the bosom of the broad Atlantic—and thus blow away the cobwebs and dust of the city.

Those who have not yet been out upon the great ocean cannot conceive—and those who have been out on it may not have seen—the splendours of a luminous fog on a glorious summer morning. The prevailing ideas in such circumstances are peace and liquidity! the only solid object visible above, below, or around, being the ship on which you stand.

Everything else is impalpable, floating, soft, and of a light, bright, silvery grey. The air is warm, the sea is glass; it is circular, too, like a disc, and the line where it meets with the sky is imperceptible. Your little bark is the centre of a great crystal ball, the limit of which is Immensity!

As we have said, peace, liquidity, luminosity, softness, and warmth prevail everywhere, and the fog, or rather, the silvery haze—for it is dry and warm as well as bright—has the peculiar effect of deadening sound, so that the quiet little noises of ship-board rather help than destroy the idea of that profound tranquillity which suggests irresistibly to the religious mind the higher and sweeter idea of “the peace of God.”

But, although intensely still, there is no suggestion of death in such a scene. It is only that of slumber! for the ocean undulates even when at rest, and sails flap gently even when there is no wind. Besides this, on the particular morning to which we call attention, a species of what we may call “still life” was presented by a mighty iceberg—a peaked and towering mountain of snowy white and emerald blue—which floated on the sea not a quarter of a mile off on the starboard bow. Real life also was presented to the passengers of the noble bark which formed the centre of this scene, in the form of gulls floating like great snowflakes in the air, and flocks of active little divers rejoicing unspeakably on the water. The distant cries of these added to the harmony of nature, and tended to draw the mind from mere abstract contemplation to positive sympathy with the joys of other animals besides one’s-self.

The only discordant sounds that met the ears of those who voyaged in the bark Ocean Queen were the cacklings of a creature in the hen-coops which had laid an egg, or thought it had done so, or wished to do so, or, having been sea-sick up to that time, perhaps, endeavoured to revive its spirits by recalling the fact that it once did so, and might perhaps do so again! By the way there was also one other discord, in the form of a pugnacious baby, which whimpered continuously, and, from some unaccountable cause, refused to be comforted. But that was a discord which, as in some musical chords, seemed rather to improve the harmony—at least in its mother’s ears.

The Ocean Queen was an emigrant ship. In her capacious hull, besides other emigrants, there were upwards of seventy diamonds from the Beehive in Spitalfields on their way to seek their fortunes in the lands that are watered by such grand fresh-water seas as Lakes Superior and Huron and Michigan and Ontario, and such rivers as the Ottawa and the Saint Lawrence.

Robert Frog and Tim Lumpy were among those boys, so changed for the better in a few months that, as the former remarked, “their own mothers wouldn’t know ’em,” and not only improved in appearance, but in spirit, ay, and even to some small extent in language—so great had been the influence for good brought to bear on them by Christian women working out of love to God and souls.

“Ain’t it lovely?” said Tim.

“Splendacious!” replied Bob.

The reader will observe that we did not say the language had, at that time, been much improved! only to some small extent.

“I’ve seen pictur’s of ’em, Bob,” said Tim, leaning his arms on the vessel’s bulwarks as he gazed on the sleeping sea, “w’en a gen’l’man came to George Yard with a magic lantern, but I never thought they was so big, or that the holes in ’em was so blue.”

“Nor I neither,” said Bob.

They referred, of course, to the iceberg, the seams and especially the caverns in which graduated from the lightest azure to the deepest indigo.

“Why, I do believe,” continued Bobby, as the haze grew a little thinner, “that there’s rivers of water runnin’ down its sides, just like as if it was a mountain o’ loaf-sugar wi’ the fire-brigade a-pumpin’ on it. An’ see, there’s waterfalls too, bigger I do b’lieve than the one I once saw at a pantomime.”

“Ay, an’ far prettier too,” said Tim.

Bobby Frog did not quite see his way to assent to that. The waterfalls on the iceberg were bigger, he admitted, than those in the pantomime, but then, there was not so much glare and glitter around them.

“An’ I’m fond of glare an’ glitter,” he remarked, with a glance at his friend.

“So am I, Bob, but—”

At that instant the dinner-bell rang, and the eyes of both glittered—they almost glared—as they turned and made for the companion-hatch, Bob exclaiming, “Ah, that’s the thing that I’m fond of; glare an’ glitter’s all wery well in its way, but it can’t ’old a candle to grub!”

Timothy Lumpy seemed to have no difference of opinion with his friend on that point. Indeed the other sixty-eight boys seemed to be marvellously united in sentiment about it, for, without an exception, they responded to that dinner-bell with a promptitude quite equal to that secured by military discipline! There was a rattling of feet on decks and ladderways for a few seconds, and then all was quiet while a blessing was asked on the meal.

For many years Miss Annie Macpherson has herself conducted parties of such boys to Canada, but the party of which we write happened to be in charge of a gentleman whom we will name the Guardian; he was there to keep order, of course, but in truth this was not a difficult matter, for the affections of the boys had been enlisted, and they had already learned to practise self-restraint.

That same day a whale was seen. It produced a sensation among the boys that is not easily described. Considerately, and as if on purpose, it swam round the ship and displayed its gigantic proportions; then it spouted as though to show what it could do in that line, and then, as if to make the performance complete and reduce the Westminster Aquarium to insignificance, it tossed its mighty tail on high, brought it down with a clap like thunder, and finally dived into its native ocean followed by a yell of joyful surprise from the rescued waifs and strays.

There were little boys, perhaps even big ones, in that band, who that day received a lesson of faith from the whale. It taught them that pictures, even extravagant ones, represent great realities. The whale also taught them a lesson of error, as was proved by the remark of one waif to a brother stray:—

“I say, Piggie, it ain’t ’ard now, to b’lieve that the whale swallered Jonah.”

“You’re right, Konky.”

Strange interlacing of error with error traversed by truth in this sublunary sphere! Piggie was wrong in admitting that. Konky was right, for, as every one knows, or ought to know, it was not a whale at all that swallowed Jonah, but a “great fish” which was “prepared” for the purpose.

But the voyage of the Ocean Queen was not entirely made up of calms, and luminous fogs, and bergs, and whales, and food. A volume would be required to describe it all. There was much foul weather as well as fair, during which periods a certain proportion of the little flock, being not very good sailors, sank to depths of misery which they had never before experienced—not even in their tattered days—and even those of them who had got their “sea-legs on,” were not absolutely happy.

“I say, Piggie,” asked the waif before mentioned of his chum, (or dosser), Konky, “’ow long d’ee think little Mouse will go on at his present rate o’ heavin’?”

“I can’t say,” answered the stray, with a serious air; “I ain’t studied the ’uman frame wery much, but I should say, ’e’ll bust by to-morrow if ’e goes on like ’e’s bin doin’.”

A tremendous sound from little Mouse, who lay in a neighbouring bunk, seemed to justify the prophecy.

But little Mouse did not “bust.” He survived that storm, and got his sea-legs on before the next one.

The voyage, however, was on the whole propitious, and, what with school-lessons and Bible-lessons and hymn-singing, and romping, and games of various kinds instituted and engaged in by the Guardian, the time passed profitably as well as pleasantly, so that there were, perhaps, some feelings of regret when the voyage drew to an end, and they came in sight of that Great Land which the Norsemen of old discovered; which Columbus, re-discovering, introduced to the civilised world, and which, we think, ought in justice to have been named Columbia.

And now a new era of life began for those rescued waifs and strays—those east-end diamonds from the great London fields. Canada—with its mighty lakes and splendid rivers, its great forests and rich lands, its interesting past, prosperous present, and hopeful future—opened up to view. But there was a shadow on the prospect, not very extensive, it is true, but dark enough to some of them just then, for here the hitherto united band was to be gradually disunited and dispersed, and friendships that had begun to ripen under the sunshine of Christian influence were to be broken up, perhaps for ever. The Guardian, too, had to be left behind by each member as he was severed from his fellows and sent to a new home among total strangers.

Still there were to set off against these things several points of importance. One of these was that the Guardian would not part with a single boy until the character of his would-be employer was inquired into, and his intention to deal kindly and fairly ascertained. Another point was, that each boy, when handed