At the end of the third act, Krap, Consul Bernick's clerk,
knocks at the door of his master's office and says, "It is blowing up to
a stiff gale. Is the _Indian Girl_ to sail in spite of it?" Whereupon
Bernick, though he knows that the _Indian Girl_ is hopelessly
unseaworthy, replies, "The _Indian Girl_ is to sail in spite of it." It
had occurred to someone that the effect of this incident would be
heightened if Krap, before knocking at the Consul's door, were to
consult the barometer, and show by his demeanour that it was falling
rapidly. A barometer had accordingly been hung, up stage, near the
veranda entrance; and, as the scenic apparatus of a Gaiety matinee was
in those days always of the scantiest, it was practically the one
decoration of a room otherwise bare almost to indecency. It had stared
the audience full in the face through three long acts; and when, at the
end of the third, Krap went up to it and tapped it, a sigh of relief ran
through the house, as much as to say, "At last! so _that_ was what it
was for!"--to the no small detriment of the situation.
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