"The groups of emigrants were characteristically employed. The Irish 'coshering,' or gossiping; for, having little or no baggage to look after, they had little care; but lean and ragged, monopolized almost all the good-humour of the ship. Acute cockneys, a race fit for every change, hammering, whistling, screwing and making all snug in their berths; tidy mothers, turning with despair from alternate and equally vain attempts to collect their numerous children out of danger, and to pack the necessaries of a room into the space of a small cupboard, wept and worked away. Here, a ruined tradesman, with his family, sat at the table, dinnerless, having rejected the coarse, tough salt meat in disgust: there, a half-starved group fed heartily on rations from the same cask, luxuriated over the allowance of grog, and the idea of such a good meal daily. Songs, groans, oaths: crying, laughing, complaining, hammering and fiddling combined to produce a chaos of strange sounds; while thrifty wives, with spectacle on nose, mended their husband's breeches, and unthrifty ones scolded. "Amid this confusion, under the authoritative guidance of the second mate, Mr. Lobbit made his way, inwardly calculating how many poachers, pauper refractories, Whiteboys, and Captain Rocks, were about to benefit Australia by their talents, until he reached a party which had taken up its quarters as far as possible from the Irish, in a gloomy corner near the stern. It consisted of a sickly, feeble woman, under forty, but worn, wasted, retaining marks of former beauty in a pair of large, dark, speaking eyes, and a well-carved profile, who was engaged in nursing two chubby infants, evidently twins, while two little things, just able to walk, hung at her skirts; a pale, thin boy, nine or ten years old, was mending a jacket; an elder brother, as brown as a berry, fresh from the fields, was playing dolefully on a hemlock flute. The father, a little, round-shouldered man, was engaged in cutting wooden buttons from a piece of hard wood with his pocket-knife; when he caught sight of Mr. Lobbit he hastily pulled off his coat, threw it into his berth, and, turning his back, worked away vigorously at the stubborn bit of oak he was carving. "'Hallo, John Bodger, so here you are at last,' cried Mr. Lobbit; 'I've broken my shins, almost broken my neck, and spoilt my coat with tar and pitch, in finding you out. Well, you're quite at home, I see: twins all well?—both pair of them? How do you find yourself, Missis?' "The pale woman sighed, and cuddled her babies—the little man said nothing, but sneered, and made the chips fly faster.