Speaker 1: A Christmas dinner in the Bay of Biscay. It was
last Christmas Day. The table cloth was laid in the
saloon of a mail steamboat, and the place was the
Bay of Biscay. We left Southampton at noon on the
twenty fourth of December eighteen seventy three, and we were
on our way to the Brazils, touching at Coruna, Carril
and Lisbon twelve hours before embarkation. I had no more
idea of spending Christmas Day in the Bay of Biscay
than of sending up my plate for roast b at
the North Pole. In fact, my bachelor friends without domestic
ties were invited and had accepted the invitation, and with
them and my wife and little ones I intended to
dine and spend the evening of the twenty fifth in
strict accordance with tradition a national taste. The reality was
very different. We want you, mister p to go to
Lisbon and Madeira and to do there whatever is required
to ensure the speedy transmission of our correspondence from the
Gold Coast. The mail steamer leaves Southampton to morrow at twelve.
These were my sudden and unchallengeable instructions. And thus it
was that I found myself sitting down to dinner in
the midst of the Bay of Biscay at five o'clock
on the twenty fifth day of last December. We were
a melancholy party. It was not the roughness of the
sea or the motion of the ship. There was not
a bit of a swell on. As smooth as landsman's
heart could desire, were the waters of that dreaded four
hundred miles of open ocean between Ushant and Aughty Gold.
Our boat was as steady as a castle. There was
no cause of discomfort on board. Indeed, we should have
been thankful for a little hardship. Our grievance, I think,
was the delusive decoration of the saloon with holly, the
menu of roast turkey, plum pudding and mince pies, the
hollow mockeries of an old English Christmas dinner at home,
so well intended by Steward and cook. These things taunted
us of the unlucky destiny which sent us into the
middle of the lonely seas to spend our Christmas night.
They set us picturing the dear family circles from which
we had run away we took our places one and
all without speaking a word. The captain at the head
of the table wore the pensive air of a family man.
Two exploiters bound for the Brazils had been toughened by
hard experience that they were touched in a tender part
at this moment of sitting down to Christmas dinner in
the midst of strangers on the desolate seas. Two engineers
from Yorkshire, who had been cheerfulness itself till now, were
suddenly mute as fishes. Presently, when the fish which we
had just managed to taste was taken away and the
turkey was being handed round, a Brazilian bound stranger made
a desperate attempt to force a conversation. Thinking of the children,
I suppose, said he to the captain. Haven't got any,
replied the captain with pensive gravity. Never was a failure
more signal. The well meaning inquirer gave it up, and
again silence reigned supreme. There was nothing to fix the
attention upon but the slight creaking of the ship and
the swaying of the glass rack over the table. The
turkey would not go down, for every one of us
had a lump in the throat, less digestible than anything
the steward could give us. When the few words which
had been uttered had passed almost out of recollection, and
we were all mentally hundreds of miles away, the captain added,
in the same serious and semi tragical air, I've got
some little nephews and nieces, though by way of explaining
that he understood the tone of mind of his guests
and was not altogether outside the range of sympathy. It
was just when the plum pudding made its appearance, and
when our young children should have been clapping their little
hands round our tables, that an awful discovery was made.
There were just thirteen of us at dinner. Darker grew
and deeper the silence and the gloom, but the subject
was in a manner congenial. Here was dismal ground on
which we could all meet. The Captain began to tell
stories of what had occurred within his own experience, and
what his father before him had told of the events
associated with the sitting down of that unlucky number at table,
more especially on a great day like this in the calendar.
Such was the impression I honestly avow of those stories
of on my mind that when some months afterwards I
saw on the London newspaper placards wreck of a Royal
mail steamer, I found myself saying, Ah, that must be
our unlucky boat. I am glad to say my prevision
was wrong, but the lost vessel was one belonging to
the same house. My own poor little contribution to the
melancholy batch of superstitious recollections was derived from an occasion
when a dozen of us were dining at an hotel
at Bath, and a thirteenth unexpectedly arrived, a gentleman known
and much esteemed by the twelve. Here comes the victim,
was the remark made as the thirteenth man sat down,
And within three months that thirteenth man was dead. Now
I had never heard that the last arrival was necessarily
the victim, and I was endeavoring to remove any particularly
pointed application of the narrative by the well worn argument
that out of a general company of thirteen middle aged men,
it was not so very unlikely that one might die
in the course of twelve months, irrespective of the magic
potency of fatal numbers. But somehow my philosophy did not
mend the matter. After all, the idea was not absolutely
exhilarating that the chances might be in favor of at
least one of this small party dying before Christmas Day
eighteen seventy four. Pondering woefully on this point, I glanced
surreptitiously towards the seat which had been occupied by the
guest who had been the thirteenth to sit down to
this saloon dinner, and the place was vacant. The circumstances
of the hour had been nearly enough for every one
of us. The story of the thirteenth finished the Christmas
dinner of eighteen seventy three. For him, he lived three
days longer, to my certain knowledge, and I trust he
is good for a far happier dinner on the twenty
fifth of this present month. But it must be admitted
that the odds on that mournful day were against him.
Dinner was over, but we could not say we had dined.
The pudding had been tasted for the sake of the children,
but we were glad when it was all over. The
passengers one by one slunk away, almost unobserved, to their berths.
No one made the attempt even to appear cheerful. I
believe I could have worked myself into a something resembling
placid enjoyment of a cigar on deck with the genial
Irish doctor. But just then, as he told me, we
were steaming very near the spot where the London went down.
This was too much for one Christmas day, and I
gave it up and went off like the rest to
my cabin to mix up in dreams the thirteenth arrival
at dinner, the children, and the wreck of the London.
It is astonishing how cheerful we all were. Next morning
we had got over Christmas Day and had run through
the bay and were plowing along joyfully at the rate
of twelve knots off the coast of Spain. Not one
of us on board, I think, would have exchanged places
on that Boxing day with those dyspeptic friends at home,
whose two cheerful spirits had so haunted us the day before.
We were braced up and renewed for the business full
of interest and novelty that lay before most of us.
But if the fates will let me eat my Christmas
dinner at home in this current December, I expect some
sort of recompense in double merriment for that melancholy dinner
hour in the Bay of Biscay on the twenty fifth
of December eighteen seventy three. End of a Christmas dinner
in the Bay of Biscay,