第18章

What a crowd upon the wharf and how they pile on to the steamer! It's a wonder that the boat can hold them all.But that's just the marvellous thing about the Mariposa Belle.

I don't know,--I have never known,--where the steamers like the Mariposa Belle come from.Whether they are built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, or whether, on the other hand, they are not built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, is more than one would like to say offhand.

The Mariposa Belle always seems to me to have some of those strange properties that distinguish Mariposa itself.I mean, her size seems to vary so.If you see her there in the winter, frozen in the ice beside the wharf with a snowdrift against the windows of the pilot house, she looks a pathetic little thing the size of a butternut.

But in the summer time, especially after you've been in Mariposa for a month or two, and have paddled alongside of her in a canoe, she gets larger and taller, and with a great sweep of black sides, till you see no difference between the Mariposa Belle and the Lusitania.

Each one is a big steamer and that's all you can say.

Nor do her measurements help you much.She draws about eighteen inches forward, and more than that,--at least half an inch more, astern, and when she's loaded down with an excursion crowd she draws a good two inches more.And above the water,--why, look at all the decks on her! There's the deck you walk on to, from the wharf, all shut in, with windows along it, and the after cabin with the long table, and above that the deck with all the chairs piled upon it, and the deck in front where the band stand round in a circle, and the pilot house is higher than that, and above the pilot house is the board with the gold name and the flag pole and the steel ropes and the flags; and fixed in somewhere on the different levels is the lunch counter where they sell the sandwiches, and the engine room, and down below the deck level, beneath the water line, is the place where the crew sleep.What with steps and stairs and passages and piles of cordwood for the engine,--oh no, I guess Harland and Wolff didn't build her.They couldn't have.

Yet even with a huge boat like the Mariposa Belle, it would be impossible for her to carry all of the crowd that you see in the boat and on the wharf.In reality, the crowd is made up of two classes,--all of the people in Mariposa who are going on the excursion and all those who are not.Some come for the one reason and some for the other.

The two tellers of the Exchange Bank are both there standing side by side.But one of them,--the one with the cameo pin and the long face like a horse,--is going, and the other,--with the other cameo pin and the face like another horse,--is not.In the same way, Hussell of the Newspacket is going, but his brother, beside him, isn't.Lilian Drone is going, but her sister can't; and so on all through the crowd.

And to think that things should look like that on the morning of a steamboat accident.

How strange life is!

To think of all these people so eager and anxious to catch the steamer, and some of them running to catch it, and so fearful that they might miss it,--the morning of a steamboat accident.And the captain blowing his whistle, and warning them so severely that he would leave them behind,--leave them out of the accident! And everybody crowding so eagerly to be in the accident.

Perhaps life is like that all through.

Strangest of all to think, in a case like this, of the people who were left behind, or in some way or other prevented from going, and always afterwards told of how they had escaped being on board the Mariposa Belle that day!

Some of the instances were certainly extraordinary.Nivens, the lawyer, escaped from being there merely by the fact that he was away in the city.

Towers, the tailor, only escaped owing to the fact that, not intending to go on the excursion he had stayed in bed till eight o'clock and so had not gone.He narrated afterwards that waking up that morning at half-past five, he had thought of the excursion and for some unaccountable reason had felt glad that he was not going.

The case of Yodel, the auctioneer, was even more inscrutable.He had been to the Oddfellows' excursion on the train the week before and to the Conservative picnic the week before that, and had decided not to go on this trip.In fact, he had not the least intention of going.

He narrated afterwards how the night before someone had stopped him on the corner of Nippewa and Tecumseh Streets (he indicated the very spot) and asked: "Are you going to take in the excursion to-morrow?"and he had said, just as simply as he was talking when narrating it:

"No." And ten minutes after that, at the corner of Dalhousie and Brock Streets (he offered to lead a party of verification to the precise place) somebody else had stopped him and asked: "Well, are you going on the steamer trip to-morrow?" Again he had answered:

"No," apparently almost in the same tone as before.

He said afterwards that when he heard the rumour of the accident it seemed like the finger of Providence, and fell on his knees in thankfulness.

There was the similar case of Morison (I mean the one in Glover's hardware store that married one of the Thompsons).He said afterwards that he had read so much in the papers about accidents lately,--mining accidents, and aeroplanes and gasoline,--that he had grown nervous.The night before his wife had asked him at supper:

"Are you going on the excursion?" He had answered: "No, I don't think I feel like it," and had added: "Perhaps your mother might like to go." And the next evening just at dusk, when the news ran through the town, he said the first thought that flashed through his head was:

"Mrs.Thompson's on that boat."

He told this right as I say it--without the least doubt or confusion.