, the audience had been growing more and more
numerous every moment; there was hardly standing-room round the top of
the companion; and the strange instinct of the race moved some of the
new-comers to close both the doors, so that the atmosphere grew
insupportable. It was a good place, as the saying is, to leave.

The wind hauled ahead with a head sea. By ten at night heavy sprays were
flying and drumming over the forecastle; the companion of Steerage No. 1
had to be closed, and the door of communication through the second cabin
thrown open. Either from the convenience of the opportunity, or because
we had already a number of acquaintances in that part of the ship, Mr.
Jones and I paid it a late visit. Steerage No. 1 is shaped like an
isosceles triangle, the sides opposite the equal angles bulging outward
with the contour of the ship. It is lined with eight pens of sixteen
bunks apiece, four bunks below and four above on either side. At night
the place is lit with two lanterns, one to each table. As the steamer
beat on her way among the rough billows, the light passed through
violent phases of change, and was thrown to and fro and up and down with
startling swiftness. You were tempted to wonder, as you looked, how so
thin a glimmer could control and disperse such solid blackness. When
Jones and I entered we found a little company of our acquaintances
seated together at the triangular foremost table. A more forlorn party,
in more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The motion
here in the ship's nose was very violent; the uproar of the sea often
overpoweringly loud. The yellow flicker of the lantern spun round and
round and tossed the shadows in masses. The air was hot, but it struck a
chill from its foetor. From all round in the dark bunks, the scarcely
human noises of the sick joined into a kind of farmyard chorus. In the
midst, these five friends of mine were keeping up what heart they could
in company. Singing was their refuge from discomfortable thoughts and
sensations. One piped, in feeble tones, "Oh why left I my hame?" which
seemed a pertinent question in the circumstances. Another, from the
invisible horrors of a pen where he lay dog-sick upon the upper shelf,
found courage, in a blink of his sufferings, to give us several verses
of the "Death of Nelson"; and it was odd and eerie to hear the chorus
breathe feebly from all sorts of dark corners, and "this day has done
his dooty" rise and fall and be