Some Personal Recollections of Victoria. 329 



It is curious how true that old saying about misfortune never 

 coming singly often is, even down to the merest trifles. As a rule 

 I am a very lucky card player, but during the first day after the 

 mishap I had been seasick until then I lost over a hundred and 

 twenty points at whist, and the next day fared not much better. 

 The day we were rescued luck turned, and by the time we were 

 landed at Queenstown, on December 3rd, I was nearly two 

 hundred points to the good. 



The Spree, during those three days, when every moment might 

 be our last, was a sort of accentuated " West ;" you saw people as 

 they really were morally naked. There were a good many North 

 Germans on board, who were decidedly the most lugubrious, and, it 

 seemed to me, also the most irritable. The first evening after the 

 accident I sat at dinner next to a North German merchant. To 

 change conversation at last into other channels, I asked him 

 what a certain dish before us was like. He answered rather 

 impatiently, angry, I suppose, to be interrupted in his interminable 

 tale of woe concerning his wife and sundry children, who now 

 would soon be a " viddow and urphans." Soon afterwards another 

 dish, the nature of which I did not know, came round, and again 

 I asked my neighbour what it was made of. " My Gott, do 

 you think I'm your tarn taster ; eat, and find out for yourself," 

 he ejaculated, and forthwith jumped up, and left the table in 

 high dudgeon. 



That morning, in the first moment of panic, when the lifebelts 

 were being served out, I had noticed this very man angrily grab 

 two of the latter, and put them on, though others had not even 

 one. Another man, quite a young fellow, who, it appeared after- 

 wards, had run away from home after a quarrel with his lady 

 love, was fairly calm during all the anxious time ; but, oddly enough, 

 lost his reason after our rescue, and committed suicide by 

 deliberately jumping overboard. Others again would sit for 

 hours below on the lowest deck, and anxiously watch the thin 

 iron partition between the flooded aft compartment and the 

 centre one, upon which our safety depended. So great was 



