But at night!—­the beauties of a night on shipboard!—­down in your berth, with the sea hissing and fizzing, gurgling and booming, within an inch of your ear; and then the steward conies along at twelve o’clock and puts out your light, and there you are!  Jonah in the whale was not darker or more dismal.  There, in profound ignorance and blindness, you lie, and feel yourself rolled upwards, and downwards, and sidewise, and all ways, like a cork in a tub of water; much such a sensation as one might suppose it to be, were one headed up in a barrel and thrown into the sea.

Occasionally a wave comes with a thump against your ear, as if a great hammer were knocking on your barrel, to see that all within was safe and sound.  Then you begin to think of krakens, and sharks, and porpoises, and sea serpents, and all the monstrous, slimy, cold, hobgoblin brood, who, perhaps, are your next door neighbors; and the old blue-haired Ocean whispers through the planks, “Here you are; I’ve got you.  Your grand ship is my plaything.  I can do what I like with it.”

Then you hear every kind of odd noise in the ship—­creaking, straining, crunching, scraping, pounding, whistling, blowing off steam, each of which to your unpractised ear is significant of some impending catastrophe; you lie wide awake, listening with all your might, as if your watching did any good, till at last sleep overcomes you, and the morning light convinces you that nothing very particular has been the matter, and that all these frightful noises are only the necessary attendants of what is called a good run.

Our voyage out was called “a good run.”  It was voted, unanimously, to be “an extraordinarily good passage,” “a pleasant voyage;” yet the ship rocked the whole time from side to side with a steady, dizzy, continuous motion, like a great cradle.  I had a new sympathy for babies, poor little things, who are rocked hours at a time without so much as a “by your leave” in the case.  No wonder there are so many stupid people in the world.

There is no place where killing time is so much of a systematic and avowed object as in one of these short runs.  In a six months’ voyage people give up to their situation, and make arrangements to live a regular life; but the ten days that now divide England and America are not long enough for any thing.  The great question is how to get them off; they are set up, like tenpins, to be bowled at; and happy he whose ball prospers.  People with strong heads, who can stand the incessant swing of the boat, may read or write.  Then there is one’s berth, a never-failing resort, where one may analyze at one’s leisure the life and emotions of an oyster in the mud.  Walking the deck is a means of getting off some half hours more.  If a ship heaves in sight, or a porpoise tumbles up, or, better still, a whale spouts, it makes an immense sensation.

Our favorite resort is by the old red smoke pipe of the steamer, which rises warm and luminous as a sort of tower of defence.  The wind must blow an uncommon variety of ways at once when you cannot find a sheltered side, as well as a place to warm your feet.  In fact, the old smoke pipe is the domestic hearth of the ship; there, with the double convenience of warmth and fresh air, you can sit by the railing, and, looking down, command the prospect of the cook’s offices, the cow house, pantries, &c.