After all, we had the mortification of feeling that we had been deceived like children and huddled like sheep as an atonement for the sluggishness or obstinacy of that less alert and punctual class of travellers who, as the experience of steamboat agents had proved, could be aroused only by successive bell-ringings and repeated threats of a forfeited passage. We had some compensation and revenge, however, as, seated in our early secured best places, we watched our fellow-excursionists come straggling on board.
The Pioneer, strongly built for service in the open sea, and of ample dimensions, must have boasted this day something like two hundred passengers. So ample were the accommodations, so widely scattered the parties, that I should scarcely believe the number to have been so considerable, but for my vivid recollection of the successive and, as it seemed, never-ending boat-companies, each of a dozen or more, that were rowed ashore at the points where we made land. Of course there was but a fractional part of these people whose individuality made any impression on me. In one respect we were a unit: all were pleasure-seekers, and the Pioneer, unlike most of the steaming monsters which ply on regular routes, was dedicated to beauty, sacred to the adventurous and the picturesque. She carried no mail; she was destined to none of the ends of traffic or profit. Her freight was all human, Nature was her mistress, and the love of Nature her inspiration and motive-power.
But as she lay there at the pier, puffing off steam and ringing perpetual bells, she gave evidence of business-like impatience; and her human cargo, as they came on board, had scarcely yet awakened to any other emotions than those of unwillingness and discomfort. Some were yet chewing the cud of unfinished breakfasts, the crumbs of which still clung to their garments; others had the blue, ghostly look of unwonted early risers, shivering with the chill morning air and the faint heart which a fasting stomach entails; some, the latest comers of all, were quite breathless, and were nervously holding on to the gloves, veils, shawls, or over-shoes caught up at the last moment and only half put on or adjusted.