Lady Betty Across the Water

								

her, though it makes her giddy to walk, and Mrs. Van der Windt is not
in the least entertaining.
She got up now, like a lamb about to be led to the slaughter, except
that she smiled bravely, which the lamb would not be able to bring
itself to do. "Come, Betty," she said to me, "it will amuse you."
"Yes, do come, Lady Betty," repeated Mrs. Van der Windt; whereupon I
obeyed, little knowing what I was laying up for myself.
Our deck is amidships. Aft, on a level with ours, is the second-class
deck; and for'rard, down below, like looking into a pit, is the
steerage. We walked to the rail, over which quite a number of men were
leaning, to see what was going on, and several moved aside to give us
room. I didn't like to take their places away, especially as they were
laughing and enjoying themselves, and I could hear the sound of dance
music coming up from below (such odd-sounding music!), but Mrs. Ess Kay
murmured to me that I mustn't refuse. "American men are never so
happy," she said, "as when they're giving up something for a woman.
They're used to it."
And evidently she, as an American woman, was used to taking it. She and
Mrs. Van der Windt slipped into the vacant spaces with a bare "thank
you," and I had to follow their example. We peered down over the rail;
and there was a sight which would have been comical, if it hadn't been
pathetic.
On rather a rough-looking deck, about twelve feet or more below us, a
dense crowd was collected round two small squares, which they purposely
left open. Besides those little squares, every inch was occupied. There
wouldn't have been any more room for even a baby to sit down than there
was in the Black Hole of Calcutta. In the crowd were old men, young men
and boys, all poorly dressed; and old women, young women and girls, big
and little. They wore crude, vivid colours, and more than half of them
had bright handkerchiefs tied over their heads. They scarcely took any
notice of the first-class passengers staring down superciliously or
pityingly at their poor amusements; they were far too much absorbed in
the dancing which was going on busily--I can't say gaily--in the two
hollow squares. In one of these an elderly, pinched little man who
looked almost half-witted, was monotonously scraping a battered fiddle,
for two solemn couples to dance round and round, always on the same
axis. But the other "dancing salon" was more lively. There a man
dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a nose, a
uniform with big red flannel epaulettes and pasteboard buttons covered
with gold paper, was pretending to conduct the band. And what a band it
was!
It consisted of four sailors, rather sheep-faced and self-conscious.
One musical instrument was a wooden box rigged up with strings and a
long handle; another was formed from a couple of huge soup-spoons tied
together, on which the player beat rhythmically with a smaller spoon;