Chapter 3

By all description, this should be the place.
Who's here?--Speak, ho!--No answer!--What is this?

TIMON OF ATHENS

A ship with her sails loosened and her ensign abroad is always a beautiful
object; and the Montauk, a noble New-York-built vessel of seven hundred
tons burthen, was a first-class specimen of the "kettle-bottom" school of
naval architecture, wanting in nothing that the taste and experience of
the day can supply. The scene that was now acting before their eyes
therefore soon diverted the thoughts of Mademoiselle Viefville and Eve
from the introductions of the captain, both watching with intense
interest the various movements of the crew and passengers as they passed
in review.

A crowd of well-dressed, but of an evidently humbler class of persons than
those farther aft, were thronging the gangways, little dreaming of the
physical suffering they were to endure before they reached the land of
promise,--that distant America, towards which the poor and oppressed of
nearly all nations turn longing eyes in quest of a shelter. Eve saw with
wonder aged men and women among them; beings who were about to sever most
of the ties of the world in order to obtain relief from the physical pains
and privations that had borne hard on them for more than threescore years.
A few had made sacrifices of themselves in obedience to that mysterious
instinct which man feels in his offspring; while others, again, went
rejoicing, flushed with the hope of their vigour and youth. Some, the
victims of their vices, had embarked in the idle expectation that a change
of scene, with increased means of indulgence, could produce a healthful
change of character. All had views that the truth would have dimmed, and,
perhaps, no single adventurer among the emigrants collected in that ship
entertained either sound or reasonable notions of the mode in which his
step was to be rewarded, though many may meet with a success that will
surpass their brightest picture of the future. More, no doubt, were to be
disappointed.

Reflections something like these passed through the mind of Eve Effingham,
as she examined the mixed crowd, in which some were busy in receiving
stores from boats; others in holding party conferences with friends, in
which a few were weeping; here and there a group was drowning reflection
in the parting cup; while wondering children looked up with anxiety into
the well-known faces, as if fearful they might lose the countenances they
loved, and the charities on which they habitually relied, in such
a _mêlée._

Although the stern discipline which separates the cabin and steerage
passengers into castes as distinct as those of the Hindoos had not yet
been established, Captain Truck