Two hours he waited, with the same exemplary patience; but still the Chalmetta was a fixture.

Night came, and the music of the bell, and the steam, and the surging water, ceased.  Uncle Nathan, thinking patience no longer a virtue, cardinal or secondary, hastened to the captain, with some appearance of indignation on his honest features.  The worthy officer very coolly informed him that, owing to the non-arrival of the mail, he should be unable to get off till the next morning.

Uncle Nathan uttered a very peculiar “O!” and, seemingly perfectly satisfied with this explanation, asked to be shown his berth.  The captain consulted the clerk, and the clerk consulted the berth-book, which conveyed the astounding intelligence that the berths were all taken!

“All taken!” exclaimed Uncle Nathan, aghast.  “Haven’t I paid for one?”

The gentlemanly clerk acknowledged that he had paid for one, and kindly offered him a mattress on the floor, assuring him that there would be plenty of berths after the boat got off.

Uncle Nathan did not see how this could be, and was informed that many berths taken were not claimed.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Western steamers seldom start at the time they advertise, but wait until they are full of freight and passengers.  The latter are boarded on them from the time they take passage, if they wish,—­often a week or ten days.  Berths are often engaged by “loafers,” who eat and sleep on board, and grumble at the detention, but who suddenly decamp when the boat starts.]

Contenting himself with this explanation, Uncle Nathan sought the boiler deck again, to obtain the only possible oblivion for his uneasiness in the society of mongrel gentlemen and monstrous mosquitos.  Those who have been subjected to these steamboat impositions will readily perceive that Uncle Nathan was in no very agreeable state of mind.  He was, to a certain extent, home-sick.  There was something in his expectant state, and something in the gloomy aspect of the low city with its cheerless lights, in the damp atmosphere and the clouds of mosquitos, to produce a sigh for home and its joys.  If any one had hummed “Sweet Home” in his ears, it would have brought the tears to his eyes.  He thought of everything connected with his hallowed home:  of the good-natured spinster who was his housekeeper, and of the ten-acre lots upon his farm; of the red steers and the gray mare; of the shaggy watch-dog and the tabby-cat; of home in all its minutiae.  Its familiar scenes visited him with a vividness which added ten-fold to their influence.  He was as far abstracted as the mosquitos, which gathered in swarms upon every tenable spot of his flesh, would permit, when his meditations were disturbed by the gentleman who occupied the next chair.  He wore the uniform of the army, and was battling the mosquitos with the smoke of a plantation cigar, which bore a very striking resemblance to those rolls of the weed vulgarly denominated “long nines.”