BECKHAMPTON TO SOUTH AFRICA 67 



room ' doors, bestowing on the occupants the 

 customary good wishes." 



The same writer, dating January 1, 1902, con- 

 tinued : 



*' When last I wrote I explained my intentions 

 as to seeing in the New Year on board this vessel, 

 and those who know me will not have doubted that 

 I did it ; but the task was not easy — at least for 

 one among the first-class passengers, most, if not 

 all, of whom had lost the salt and fire of life for the 

 time being. They turned in long before the due 

 time, and I sat writing up in the room above the 

 saloon till it was a case of * lights out ' there, and 

 then the smoking-room was the next resource 

 for putting in the necessary hours ; but even there 

 it was a case of closing the bar at 11.15, and still 

 three-quarters of an hour to make good. I went 

 out on the fore-deck, and heard the gay sounds of 

 a sing-song going on amid the third-class pas- 

 sengers, many of whom are as undesirable a crowd 

 as you could wish to imagine — Polish Jews and so 

 forth of the most squalid type. In the second-class 

 saloon there was mirth and melody, and as I stood 

 above it there came roaring up a chorus from 

 * San Toy,' and in deeper, mellower, heart-search- 

 ing harmonies the primeval chorus of the sea. 



" How strange it seemed to stand there under a 

 beautiful starlit sky, listening to all this frivolous 



