ignorant people in Duxmoor—they had had no
one to teach them, or to care for them, and
after the fever, and the long hard winter, they
cared little for their own flesh and blood, still
less for their neighbours. So John Bodger was
forgotten almost before he was out of sight.

By the road-waggon which the Bodgers
joined when they reached the highway, it was
a three days' journey to Plymouth.

But, although they were gone, Mr. Lobbit
did not feel quite satisfied; he felt afraid lest
John should return and do him some secret
mischief. He wished to see him on board ship,
and fairly under sail. Besides, his negotiation
with Emigration Brokers had opened up
ideas of a new way of getting rid, not only of
dangerous fellows like John Bodger, but of
all kinds of useless paupers. These ideas he
afterwards matured, and although important
changes have taken place in our emigrating
system, even in 1851, a visit to Government
ships, will present many specimens of parish
inmates converted, by dexterous diplomacy,
into independent labourers.

Thus it was, that, contrary to all precedent,
Mr. Lobbit left his shopman to settle the
difficult case of credit with his Christmas
customers, and with best horse made his way to
Plymouth; and now for the first time in his
life, floated on salt water.

With many grunts and groans he climbed
the ship's side; not being as great a man at
Plymouth as at Duxmoor, no chair was
lowered to receive his portly person. The
mere fact of having to climb up a rope
ladder from a rocking boat on a breezy,
freezing day, was not calculated to give comfort
or confident feelings to an elderly gentleman.
With some difficulty, not without
broken shins, amid the sarcastic remarks of
groups of wild Irishmen, and the squeaks of
barefooted children—who, not knowing his
awful parochial character, tumbled about
Mr. Lobbit's legs in a most impertinently
familiar manner—he made his way to the
captain's cabin, and there transacted some
mysterious business with the Emigration
Agent over a prime piece of mess beef and a
glass of Madeira. The Madeira warmed
Mr. Lobbit. The captain assured him
positively that the ship would sail with the
evening tide. That assurance removed a
heavy load from his breast: he felt like a
man who had been performing a good action,
and almost cheated himself into believing
that he had been spending his own money in
charity; so, at the end of the second bottle,
he willingly chimed in with the broker's
proposal to go down below and see how the
emigrants were stowed, and have a last look
at "his lot."

Down the steep ladder they stumbled into
the misery of a "bounty" ship. A long, dark
gallery, on each side of which were ranged
the berths; narrow shelves open to every
prying eye; where, for four months, the
inmates were to be packed, like herrings in a
barrel, without room to move, almost without
air to breathe; the mess table, running
far aft the whole distance between the masts,
left little room for passing, and that little was
encumbered with all manner of boxes,
packages, and infants, crawling about like
rabbits in a warren.

The groups of emigrants were characteristically
employed. The Irish "coshering," or
gossiping; for, having little or no baggage
to look after, they had little care; but lean
and ragged, monopolised almost all the
good-humour of the ship. Acute cockneys,
a race fit for every change, hammering,
whistling, screwing and making all snug in
their berths; tidy mothers, turning with
despair from alternate and equally vain attempts
to collect their numerous children out of
danger, and to pack the necessaries of a room
into the space of a small cupboard, wept and
worked away. Here, a ruined tradesman;
with his family, sat at the table, dinnerless,
having rejected the coarse, tough salt meat
in disgust: there, a half starved group fed
heartily on rations from the same cask,
luxuriated over the allowance of grog, and the
idea of such a good meal daily. Songs,
groans, oaths: crying, laughing, complaining,
hammering and fiddling combined to produce
a chaos of strange sounds; while thrifty wives,
with spectacle on nose, mended their
husbands' breeches, and unthrifty ones scolded.

Amid this confusion, under the authoritative
guidance of the second mate, Mr.
Lobbit made his way, inwardly calculating
how many poachers, pauper refractories,
Whiteboys, and Captain Rocks, were about
to benefit Australia by their talents, until
he reached a party which had taken up its
quarters as far as possible from the Irish, in
a gloomy corner near the stern. It consisted
of a sickly, feeble woman, under forty, but
worn, wasted, retaining marks of former
beauty in a pair of large, dark speaking eyes,
and a well carved profile, who was engaged
in nursing two chubby infants, evidently
twins, while two little things just able to
walk, hung at her skirts; a pale, thin boy,
nine or ten years old, was mending a jacket;
an elder brother, as brown as a berry, fresh
from the fields, was playing dolefully on a
hemlock flute. The father, a little round-
shouldered man, was engaged in cutting
wooden buttons from a piece of hard wood
with his pocket-knife; when he caught sight
of Mr. Lobbit he hastily pulled off his coat,
threw it into his berth, and, turning his back,
worked away vigorously at the stubborn bit
of oak he was carving.

"Hallo, John Bodger, so here you are at
last," cried Mr. Lobbit; "I've broken my
shins, almost broken my neck, and spoilt
my coat with tar and pitch, in finding you
out. Well, you're quite at home, I see:
twins all well?—both pair of them? How do
you find yourself, Missis?"

The pale woman sighed and cuddled her