The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

Back Forward Menu

cheering one another when they grew lonely or homesick for those they
had left behind.

When the weather was good their spirits rose and there were many rounds
of singing and story-telling as they sat clustered together like bees
under the lee of the deck-house, and in all of these Stevenson joined
heartily.

"We were indeed a musical ship's company," he says, "and cheered our way
into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations,
good, bad or indifferent--Scottish, English, Irish, Russian or
Norse--the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a
recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a powerful Scotch accent, varied
the proceedings; and once we sought in vain to dance a quadrille, eight
men of us together, to the music of the violin. The performers were
humorous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private life; but
as soon as they were arranged for the dance, they conducted themselves