So that I had somewhere to lay my swimming head it was immaterial
to me, as I then felt, whether it was in the steerage or in the

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

vessel's hold. I followed the direction in which Mr. Bedrick's hand
pointed, and the next moment was stretched in one of the births.—
There in the darkness and chilly atmosphere of the place, with every
motion of the brig drawing at my very vitals, the sea dashing menacingly
against the brig's sides, close to my head, and the noise of feet
and rattling cordage above me, I lay many miserable hours, with but
one sensation—that of miserable suffering. A thousand times I wished
myself on shore again, and bitterly did I lament my ambition for foreign
travel which had brought me into such worldless woe. It was,
however, a sort of consolation to me that my fellow-passengers suffered
in like manner with myself. I had not been a quarter of an hour in
my bunk before Hewitt came creeping down the ladder with a face as
pale as a sheet, and holding on by whatever came in his way for support.
With a miserable groan he threw himself into the first berth
that offered its repose, and there lay at intervals expressing his dissatisfaction
that the sea was not made to lie smooth and not boil up in the
fashion it did, merely for the sake of turning a poor landsman's stomach.
Sick as I was I could not but smile at some of his speeches,
which were addressed rather to the empty air than to me. In a little
while after he had got into his berth Radsworth came down with the
cautions step of one who had hitherto walked on the firm earth. He
looked the picture of woe. In trying to find his berth he was knocked
over by a lurch of the brig and came rolling down upon me. At length
he succeeded in getting into his berth, and there gave himself up to
his misery.

The wind seemed to increase and the waves to run higher each moment.
The brig would sometimes roll as if she would fairly turn over,
and more than once my heart was in my mouth lest she had actually
accomplished that feat; but hearing Captain Pright still swearing on
deck I was reassured. Sometimes she would seem for a moment to
be slowly ascending some mountainous wave; then she would pause
and hang perfectly still as if balancing herself! then, oh horrors! she
would shoot, dart, dive down with the velocity of an arrow! Who can
describe the sensation of that descending motion? It was to the
shrinking soul like going down into the central heart of the ocean!—
The very strings of life were drawn down with it, while a terrible faintness
involves the whole man.

`What do you think of this, any how?' called out Hewitt in a dolorous
tone after one of these horrible plunges.

`I would I was ashore,' gasped Radsworth. `I would give all I
hope to be worth in all my life to come for a foot square of solid ground
to stand upon.'

I from my heart echoed his sentiments; but I was too sick to venture
to open my lips.

`Where is Fairfax, I wonder?' asked Hewitt, after a pause, during
which we had been all three busily reversing the action of eating our
dinners, one of the most unwilling acts man ever performs, and always
with an ill grace.

`I don't think he'll be sick,' answered Radsworth, `he has been on
the sea once and has the advantage of us.'

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

`Confound him,' said Hewitt in a murmuring tone, `it will be too
bad it he ain't sick too.'

`If he is, he won't come into the steerage,' answered Radsworth.—
`When I came down he was talking to Mr. Bedrick and saying he did
not come aboard to be a steerage passenger, and he'd have the rights
of a cabin passenger.'

`What did Mr. Bedrick say to that?' I asked.

`He said he should do as he said, that he was his clerk and must
submit to his regulations. Fairfax turned to me and said that he would
have a birth in the cabin or make a row; and as a row was already
began to be kicked up in my stomach I retreated down here glad to
find any place to lay in.'

`Fairfax is quick and fiery, and will get into trouble,' said Hewitt.
`Let us wait till we all get over this confounded sea-sickness, and
then we can look after asserting our rights. Here comes Fairfax
now!'

While he was speaking our fourth man made his appearance among
us.

`Are you sick, Fairfax?' asked Hewitt with a faint hope that he
would answer in the affirmative.

`No,' answered the young man, `I am only mad. So you have all
turned in. Well, you may lay there if you will, but I mean to have a
berth in the cabin. It is an imposition to put us here. Bedrick, himself,
is to live in the cabin and also his two sons who are no better than
we are. Bedrick says we are to eat in the cabin; but that is not
enough. I don't like this beginning of things at all; and if I had
known that we were to occupy the steerage I would have seen him in
Guinea before I would have come with him. There is his eldest son,
too. He took the liberty to speak to me because I chose to address
his father in plain words. I don't like him nor the other one. Both of
them look upon us as beneath them; and I believe the old man regards
us no better than as if we were bounden apprentices.'

`I don't see but that we will have to put up with it, Fairfax,' said I,
`at least for the present. We can be more by ourselves here in the
steerage than we could be in the cabin under Mr. Bedrick's eye; and
I dare say we shall like this better than the cabin.'

`That is what I was thinking,' said Radsworth. `Here we shall
be independent and do as we like, and speak with each other without
fear.'

`Yes,' added Hewitt with emphasis, `and if any body dares to intrude
upon our sanctum we will put 'em out by main force. If we are
to live here, it shall be our castle.'

`That it shall,' answered Fairfax; `so boys, we will say nothing
more at present, but hold on as we are. At night we'll have a lantern
swung from the beam, and we will try to make the best out of bed!'

`Did you insult Mr. Bedrick?' asked Radsworth.

`No, not a word. I merely told him in a firm tone what I believed
to be our rights. I spoke civilly, though his son with the light hair
and spectacles, he who is to teach us Spanish, and looks like a jackass,
said that I was impudent and told me to mind how I spoke to his father.

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

It is my private opinion, boys, that we shall have a `muss' before we
get to Buenos Ayres; for I don't think nature ever intend ed that those
Bedrick's and ourselves should ever pull together kindly.'

`It is wisest, however, to be patient and forbear,' I remarked. `You
know we have voluntarily placed ourselves under their father, and that
at all hazards we are completely in their hands.'

`Well, I am willing to be patient,' answered the impetuous Fairfax,
and I trust all will go smoothly, but blame me if I think so.'

`Is old Bedrick sea-sick yet?' dryly inquired Hewitt with a peculiar
shuffle of his nose which was habitual to him.

`He was looking white about the gills when I came down. His
oldest son Edwin is already feeding the whales with his last shore
dinner.'

“Well, I am glad to hear it,' answered Hewitt; `I think I should
feel much better if I had certain intelligence that Captain Pright aud
his whole ship's crew were playing the game the whale played when he
cast forth Jonah!'

Night came rapidly on and darkness enveloped all in the steerage.—
Fairfax was the only one of us who would go into the cabin to sepper.
As for ourselves the very knowledge that there was such a thing as
food was abhorent to us. We had but one idea, and that was a
solid rock.

Such a night as I passed has had no parallel since in my experience
either on sea or land. The wind had increased to a gale. The roar
of the tempest reached our ears with the sound of the wild warfare of
the tumbling surges. The masts and yards cracked! the blocks
shrieked piercingly! the billows would break against the brig's side
with the force of a cannon ball and the noise of thunder, causing the
vessel to shiver to her very keel. Every timber in her seemed to have
a voice to complain, and all the live-long night kept up a wailing that
was almost madness to listen to. Added to this was the constant and
never absent fear, which as landsmen was natural to us, that we should
every minute go to the bottom, I was also sick at heart—sick in body—
sick in soul—and wretchedly sick in spirit. There is no malady
that pierces and penetrates to the joints and marrow like sea-sickness!
It makes the very soul faint within itself.

At length morning dawned, but the light brought with it no relief.
Day after day passed until the fifth day out before I was able to get
upon deck or take a morsel of nourishment. Radsworth got on deck
the day before us, but Hewitt was a full week below. At length the
monster was conquered. We got over it after it had its course, as
children get over the whooping cough. Our pallid visages began to
resume their life hue, and our mouths to relax into smiles. We soon
got our appetites aboard, and after we had been ten days at sea each
man was able to eat his full allowance. Fair winds and pleasant
weather spread cheerfulness around; and as we four stood together one
fine moonlight night just forward of the gang-way watching the sparkling
sea and gemmed skies, we remarked to one another that it was
not after all so bad an affair to go to sea!

We found Mr. Bedrick, who got well the last of all, disposed to be

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

pleasant; and as we had our meals in the cabin and lived pretty well,
we said nothing more about the steerage. In fact, we had become
quite reconciled to it, for with a lantern it was light enough, and we
had arranged it so that it had quite a neat appearance. Our berths
were good mattresses, and each of us had a blanket. So on the whole,
things were favorable, and we were disposed to put the best light upon
the matter. Captain Pright, now that the bustle of leaving port was
over, proved to be a pretty clever sort of a man, though very illiterate,
and wanting in many of the deceucies which are the salt of social intercourse.
He would swear profanely, he would blow his nose with
his fingers at table, pick his teeth with his fork and then stick it into
a piece of bread and hand it to you, he would drink out of the pitcher,
and after wiping his knife clean on his tongue would cut butter with it
and help you! But these were minor points; and people at sea, especially
those who sleep in the steerage, should not be two particular.
Captain Pright was a fair specimen of a great many sea-captains who
command vessels of a smaller class. He had risen from a cabin boy
through all the stations to the command. He boasted that he had
been to school but three months, and that he went to sea in his twelfth
year, and had been attached to some vessel or other ever since. He
was a man about forty, rudely framed, rough visaged, with a snub
nose, little grey eyes, a dark complexion, and very low born looking.—
He was imperious in command, and was fully sensible of the vast power
that the law allows a captain to hold in his his hands, a power elsewhere
in the social sphere unparalleled. Every sea-captain once on
blue water is an autocrat in power, and many of them become the
most despicable tyrants over the handful of men whom circumstances
have placed under their control. Passengers, indeed, do not always
escape the exercise of their power, for `on board my ship I am king'
is more than once hinted into their ears. Yet, at the bottom, Captain
Pright possessed several good points of character which subsequently
manifested themselves in our favor.

The character of Mr. Bedrick I shall leave for future notice. I will
however, describe my fellow clerks. Henricus Hewitt, the eldest, was
the son of a highly respectable merchant in the town in which the Institution
which we had left was situated. He was about nineteen, but
looked as if he was full twenty-one. He was tall and loosely put together,
and was at times ludicrously ungainly in his movements. At
heart he was one of the best fellows; he had good sense combined with
a simplicity that to those who did not know him seemed stupidity; yet
out of this apparent dullness sparkled from time to time the brightest
wit. He had a heavy, dark brow, and a large, quiet eye of a bright
brown color. His smile was pleasing and he was universally good-natured.
He would bear a joke, and was sometimes made the butt of
our superabundance of gay spirits. He had embarked on this adventure
first, from a desire to see the world, and next, from the love of
money, for which he had already manifested quite a covetous affection.
As a scholar, he had been above mediocrity, though we soon found
that there was no affinity between his tongue and the tongue Spanish.
Radsworth was also of a highly respectable family, his father having

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

been a General in the army during the last war. Radsworth was ambitious,
spirited, adventurous; and being just about to enter upon some
pursuit when Mr. Bedrick's letter came, at once resolved to embrace
the opportunity of embarking upon the theatre of active business presented
to him under the novel coloring of a foreign clerk-ship. His
imagination, as my own had been, was fired by the pictures of life
which rose up to his mind from the pages of travellers' books which he
had read, and without more reflection he gave himself to the expedition.
He was a little over eighteen, of a manly height, fair complexion,
full blue eyes, rather too wide open to be handsome, and square
cheeks and chin. He was light, active, and in vigorous health, as indeed
we all were, In character he was without reproach, being truly
upright and moral. In spirits he was cheerful, and inclined to take
the world as he found it. In heart he was kind and brave, and faithful
to those who confided in him.