AN AUSTRALIAN PILGRIMAGE. CHAPTER V.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1863, 14 June 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN AUSTRALIAN PILGRIMAGE.

CHAPTER Y.

By LEE L 1L 1 ACTON.

A TIJAGJ3DY. A Suggestion for the I.O.G.T.— Man Overboard.—The Minor Key.— The Drunkard's Apostrophe. During my travels I was greatly struck with a very gieat want — temperance steamers. Repeatedly in these colonies, one reads in the papers that Mr. Brown or Mr. Smith, is going home for the purpose of recruiting his health, which has suffered by his long and arduous career. The general public are always uncharitable enough to think on such occasions that Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown is going home, simply to try and shako oS the drink, -which has got such a hold of him, that he cannot keep from it on shore, where he meets so many friends. In some cases these voyages to escape the fiend are successful, and the victim returns a restored man. In the majority of cases we read of his death on board ship or at home. It can hardly be otherwise. All the steamers, ocean or coasters, are floating grogshops, and the bar, as on shore, gives a great pioiit. On this voyage ol oms it was crowded. Several young squatters, returning home after a visit to Melbourne, were finishing up their spree on board the vessel, and champagne flowed like water. There were abo several horsy men and bookmakei3, not to mention thiisty theatricals and loafers, ready to diink the ocean dry. At the head of the squatters was young Boggabiu, who managed to be occasionally compos mentis, but this cannot be said of the others. One remained prostrate on deck all the way, the steward bringing up champagne, whenever he was conscious enough to take it. There was a bar in the steerage as well, and there, the fibre of the people being coarser, and there being little restraint, the scenes, I was told, were extraordinary. The general impression conveyed to me was that sea-voyages were failures, if ths object was to get free from drink. _ I can assure the temperance people that if they want to accomplish a great good, to provide a means whereby the victims of drink may get free for a time, they ehould provide coasting and ocean vessels, on which not a drop of liquor would be allowed. A voyage to England on board one of these boats, would do more good than incarceration in an Inebriate Asylum. The want of the sale of liqor on board- vessels, is shown by the number of suicides that occur. " Missed at sea," is a common paragraph in the papers. An incident occurred on the second day of our voyage which illustrates my remarks with tragic force. One of the passengers that had early attracted my attention was a man upon whose whole being drink had set its seal. Not but that he was respectably dressed, but face, form, dress gave indelible evidence that drink was his curse. The first day he never visited the bar. He moved about deck, muttering to himself. Repeatedly I watched him leaning on the bulwarks, gazing, apparently fascinated, into the blue depths of the sea, watching intently the feathery foam thrown off by the ship, so delicate m color and pattern that no human hand could depict it on canvas or in lace, which latter it resembles. He would shako hia head, mutter, and wave his handa. Little attention was paid to him, as half-delirious passengers are not uncommon. People laughed as he went by. " Just getting out of them," they would say. People seem to me to regard drunkenness and its effects with altogether too much levity. On the stage drunkennesa is a conventional means of exoifcing laughter. But if we think for a moment of the awful tragedy that really underlies drunkenness and its manifestations, we should rather weep than laugh. There is nothing really funny in drunkenness or the effects of drink. On the second day the passenger was early at the bar, and ere long his flushed face and disordered step showed that he had partaken deeply. His resolution was broken. I was listening to some badinage between the Boggabrian brigade and the " talent," when a voice rang through the ship, " Man overboard 1 " It thrilled everyheart, and as one we made a rush to the side. The captain was on the bridge, and his orders were prompt and promptly obeyed. . The steamer was stopped with marvellous celerity, but before she had backed a boat was on its way to the rescue. We could see the men pulling for dear life Over the calm, blue deep, ruffled only by " catspaws," and farther off a black spec, the head of the would-be suicide. Twice that spec sunk beneath the blue surface, and every face grew pale. But after disappearing the second time it once more was seen, and close to the boat. In a few seconds the insensible form had been pulled into the boat, and the men rowed vigorously towards the steamer, amid rounds of enthusiastic cheers, such as the sea-gulls in that Bpot had never heard before. So rapid had been the events that the man was handed over the bows of the steamer before we had thoroughly realised the position. That evening I was permitted by the doctor in charge of the patient — we had a medico passenger — to have a chat with him in his oabin, where he waa confined. The patient was wild, and hollo weyed, and there was a wandering in his manner, a nervous twitching in his hands that gaye me the idea that he was suffering acutely from the worst form of \ drink delirium. Shaking hands and occasional Bhudderings further characterised the case. It was, indeed, of a most distressing character.

A lons conversatioa followed, the gist of which, discarding much incoherence, is given below. I believe that it will find an echo in the hearts of Ml who hare known what it is to hare the grip of the modern Molooh upon their nature. While I sat in that cabin listening to the strange story of this man the saloon was filled vrith a pleasure-seeking crowd, who had attended to listen to a concert or entertainment, of which the leading lights were Fenillemort, Cochon, Yaurien, Miss Squillhigh, and the other operatic artists. The Terpsichoreans were out of it, but they had the consolation of sipping Boggabri's champagne, and doing the •riticising, which labor of lore is, I think, the most pleasant of all. Most of the pieces sang or played were operatic. Just as we begun to talk Yaurion, in a roice, the , remnant of what had once been magnificent, began to sing that fine brindisi in Traviata, " Libiamo, Libiamo, nt Liete Galici." The strains of the inspiriting melody set the air ' joyously tibrating. Even I, casehardened as I am, felt the influence. But upon the victim of drink the effect seemed maddening. He started from his couch, listened as if suffering eternal torment, and then burst out : — •• Do you hear it, do you hear it, the mocking strains of eternal woe? Do you hear it, do you hear it ? Ah ! it is nearly thirty years since I first heard that melody, when it was new, when I was a wild lad in London. It and the other brindisis hare haunted mo, they have been the sound phantoms of my life ; and yet they are but marvellous proofs of the power of gejrius. In that air Verdi seems, to the superficial, to giro us an outburst: of Bucchanal joy. But listen to it — do you not hear it under the air, another in the minor key, a wail and a lament ? Yes, yes ; there it is, to my ears the leading strain. " If we play a melodyjin a minor key very fast it is very merry, but the slower we play the more mournful it becomes. That in true of life. It is all in the minor key, all -a lament. When life is in its morn, when the hot blood makes the time fast we do not think so ; then the tune is joyous. It is a tarantella, a jig, 'a reel, an Offenbachian revel or finale. But the blood grows colder and colder, the time slows and slows, and then the melancholy strains of the minor key i break out, the gastly skin appears through the rouge and the powder. At last the minor alone is heard. I have arrived at that stage — I can hear nothing but the minor key. Let them sing on in the major— to me it is all minor, all minor, and will be for ever." He was exhausted now, and leant back. The doctor gave him a small glass of brandy. " It is always so," said the man, evidently intellectual and well educated, "no matter how evident it is that 1 am dying of drink, that it is ruining me body and soul, that I ehould be shut up to keep me from the fiend ; everyone presses it upon me. Go where I may, it is the same. Drink, drink, everywhere I The devil meets me on every hand ; he multiplies himpelf. Do I walk the streets dying with hunger, wanting half-a-crown to recruit my famished body, and ask an old friend, it is not forthcoming ; but the invariable reply 13, ' Come on, old fellow, and have a drink ; it will do you good.' And it does — it drives me nearer and nearer to the grave ; it makes me break my resolution. Do I visit anyone, do I dine at a table, there is the drink again, and I am urged to take itforced. Do I go to an hotel with an acquaintance, and, wishing to avoid the hideous source of all evil, call for a nonintoxicating drink, I am laughed out of my resolution. Strong-minded men judge of me as of themselves, and think I can stop at a certain point. I cannot ; and yet they pursue me to the death. The world seems to me one vast drinking den, one vast congregation of those who have given way to alcohol, and persist in pulling down everyone else. How did I acquire this craving for alcohol, you ask? I cannot tell. It stole upon me liko a thief in the night. I remember that I drank from my earliest youth. I didn't like it at first, it used to make my head ache, but to bo ' a man,' I took it. Then when I entered upon the rosy days, the time when youth goes in for wild and unlawful pleasure, drink was necessary to keep up the spirits, to keep up the laughter of the lost spirits who were weaving the web that was to enclose them in the end. I didn't care for drink then, save to rouse the passions to keep up the excitement. Then business cares came, and somehow business could not be done unless drink w.as always at hand. A bargain must have its 1 shout, 5 a country friend could not be met without a round, the theatre visited with drink after drink ; and so it went on — why narrate, it is the experience of thousands. I cannot remember when drink first began to be my master instead of my servant. The process wi 3 imperceptible. It was not until my loose habits had caused me to suffer great losses that I began to fall from the high estate I held, to lose the respect and confidence of those \yhose respect and confidence was worth anything that I felt the craving of drink, that I used to become intoxicated. Heretofore, even no matter how much I took, I generally retained my senses, and knew where to stop, but now I drank and drank till I became either a maniac or helpless. I felt the chain tightening around me every day. I remembered the old, old fable, and it made me shudder. You recollect it ? No 1 Well a genii once used to place chains of gold, light as the gossamer, upon those who became his servants. For years they could be torn asunder like a spider's web, but the foolish wearers hugged them as pleasant and ornamental, and then the links grew and grew, changing from gold to Bilrer, then to copper, and lastly to steel, when no efforts of the wearer, now awake to his doom, could snap them asunder. So it was with me, yet I fought wildly against the demon. I would abstain for a month, two months, three months, but eventually the craving would overcome, and I would sink lower and lower — the contest became more hopeless. You can hardly realise how bitterly, how savagely I fought, how vain were my struggles. I became moody , brokenhearted. I blamed the world for what was, my own fault. Whenever I was crossed I flew to drink to drown my pangs, and friends encouraged me. They did not know of the battle I was waging, so when they saw _me down-hearted they at once forced me to drink. I once thought I had conquered the fiend. _ I abstained for three whole months, during which I got together spme money, and was almost recovered to society. I was aßked to attend the wedding of a relative. I was urged to drink champagne ; it was looked upon as an offence that I did not. Only one glass, they said, but the one glass— that surely would not hurt me. lam weak by nature ; I gave in ; I was lost. Since then I have made no effort to break the chain, and I do not intend. I know where I am going ; I know what will be my end 1 " The expression of the wretched man's face as he said this was appalling beyond description. It was as if the shadows of the doom of which he spoke had already fallen upon hia face. 11 Write, write," he said, rising on his elbow ; " write, write, and let the young read my fate. All is well now ; listen to those bright handsome youths joining in the chorus of Libiamo — their time will come. Libiamo, libiamo ; yes, let us drink, let us drink, to the infernal gods. I was once like them— they will yet be like me." Saddened by this spectacle I left the wretched' man's cabin, and entered the saloon where the scene was gay to a degree, fioggabri was there in hiB glory, and ,the "talent" were doing well at Napoleon. But I could not join in the revelry after listening to the awful narrative of the drunkard below, and fleeing his mad, despairing face. I went on deck, and seeking a solitary seat, gave myself up to meditation, looking out upon the phosphorescent sea. The thought arose to my mind, what an inestimable boon will be conferred upon man when some scientific man will discover a remedy for dipsomania, some medicine that will restore the organs to their normal state. Till then the fate of the drunkard will always be a shadow upon our life. Who bat has seen the best, the. most generous, the most love»ble, fall by the roadside, destroyed by the fiend* . I

After a while I fell into a dream-troubled sleep, haunted by the faca of the wretched man below. I dreamt I was looking pver the bulwarks, and beheld the sea peopled with myriads of the most hideous and giotesque forms, all laughing fund jeering and beckoning. Suddenly the whole hellish crowd uttered a combined laugh, the hideous mockery of whioh made me shudder and strive to awake. Through that laugh I thought I heard the strains of the brindisi— in a minor key. Something white flashed by me, I hoard a splash in the sea, a hideous burst of laughter, and then there is stillne33, save the groaning of the machinery, the ■wash of the water. I struggled to awake, but it seemed as if theie was a nightmare upon me. At last, with a start, I opened my eyes. The cold grsy dawn had appeared in the east, the air was chill. I rose and went below. "When I came to the breakfast table everyone was talking in an excited tone. I was soon told what had happened. The dipsomaniac had eluded his guards in the night — probably they had joined too much in the festivities — and was missing. Miles distant the dead body was perhap3 floating, the cold white face looking into bright morning skies, on the moving bosom of the sea 1 Had the vision of the night been only a dream ? (To be continimrt.)