ssible, _addio Pizzo!_ Our
vessel is quickly off, and our Cyclopean stokers are already mopping off
their black sweat in the dreadful glare of the engine-room. Some cages,
full of canaries and parrots, just become our fellow-passengers, are all
in a fluster at the screaming and bustle to which they are unused, and a
large cargo of turkeys, with fettered legs, and fowls that can only flap
their wings, do so in despair at the treatment threatened them by the
dogs on deck--second and third class passengers are fighting for
prerogatives in misery, amidst the clatter of unclean plates, and the
remains of the supper of the fore-cabin. The space for walking, is
encumbered with coils of cordage, and the empty water-barrels are all
taken possession of for seats. Bad tobacco, even among the _elite_, and
garlic every where, drive us to the fore-deck, or to the neutral ground
between it and ours. A passage, which promised fair when we started,
begins, now that we are half over, to look suspicious; and a preliminary
lurch or two, as the breeze freshens, converts many from an opinion they
had begun to _promulgate_, that the steamer on the Mediterranean
afforded, _on the whole_, the most eligible mode of traversing space. We
looked at each other piteously enough, on seeing that we were fast going
to face a magnificent specimen of a wave, of which our piston was
determined to try the valour, and if possible abate the confidence. When
Greek meets Greek, said we, as we dashed through it, and gave a warning
to old Neptune to take care of his interests below! Other huge parcels
of water hit us obliquely, or come down upon us with a swoop like a
falchion; steam hisses, and chimney gets red-hot; but though the vessel
yields not, there be those on board who _do_: an Anglo-Sicilian pleasure
party is quenched in twenty blanched faces at once; conversation is
over, women retire, and the deck is deserted. Against such _ups and
downs as these_, the very philosophy of the Stoics were powerless!--even
thou, O moon! seemest a _little_ disconcerted, and hast withdrawn thy
_pale_ face from thy whilom plate-glass, _the Mediterranean_, so often,
for weeks together, like the inland lake of the north,

"Thy _mirror_! to inform
Thee, if the dark and arrowy storm
The forest boughs that brake,
Require thy slender silvery hand, to still
Thy ruffled wreath of _lily_ and jonquil!"

_Pindemonte._

Whew!--wind gets up, and takes part