Twenty minutes later the great ship was swinging out into the harbor.  In a dark passage on the steerage-deck cowered M’riar, for the first time in her life afloat, and wondering why the motion of the vessel seemed to make her wish to die; her white face, strained, frightened eyes and trembling hands marking her, to the experienced, unsympathetic eyes of the stern steerage-stewardess, an early victim of seasickness.

“Hi, w’ere’s yer ticket?” that fierce female cried, and M’riar showed it to her, weakly, scarcely caring whether it entitled her to passage or condemned her to expulsion from the ship by a sharp toss overside.

“Garn in there,” said the stewardess, studying the ticket and its bearer’s symptoms simultaneously.  “S’y, yer goin’ ter be a nice sweet passenger to ’ave hon board, now ’yn’t yer?”

“Hi’m goin’ ter die,” said M’riar with firm conviction and not at all appalled but rather pleased at thought of it.

“No such luck fer hus!” the stewardess replied.  “Get in there, cawn’t yer, before hit comes quite hon?”

So M’riar, long before the ship began to definitely feel even the gentle Channel sea, was thrust into retirement, willy, nilly, and immediately sought a bunk, absolutely without interest in anything, even in her own sad fate.  All she wished to do was die, at once, and she had too little energy even to wish that very vividly.  Miss Anna, Herr Kreutzer and the fine young man who had been kind to them, who, ten minutes earlier, had all been real and potent interests, dimmed into hazy phantoms of a bygone activity of mind.

“Oh,—­ar-r-r-r-r-r!” M’riar groaned.  “Th’ bloomink ship is standin’ on ’er bloody ’ead, yn’t ’er?”

“Garn!  Keep yer ’ead flat.  Lay down,” the stewardess replied, “er you’ll be.”

M’riar kept her head flat.

Out on the open deck, forward of the bridge, where, as well as aft, the vessel, like many of a bygone type was cut away, leaving the forward and after railings of the promenade-deck, like the barriers of a balcony, for the first-cabin passengers to peer across at their less lucky fellows of the steerage, Herr Kreutzer and his Anna, both bewildered, stood by their little pile of baggage, waiting for direction and assistance in searching out their quarters.  Surrounding them a motley group of many nationalities was gathered.  There were Germans, Swedes, some French, some Swiss, a group of heavy-browed and jowled Hungarians, a few anaemic, underfed young cockneys, and, dominating all, to the casual eye, because of their bright colors, a small group of Italians.  To these the largest one among them was making himself clear.

“I,” he was saying, “am Pietro Moresco.  I have-a da nice political posish, an’ nice-a barber-shop on Mulberry-a Strit.  Some-a day I getta on da force—­da pollis-force.  Sure t’ing.  I been-a home to see ma moth.  I go-a back to make-a da more mon.”  He pulled out from his corded bundle of red quilts and coats and rugs some bottles of cheap wine.  “I getta place for all you men.”  He was beginning, thus early in the voyage of these would-be citizens, to prepare to use them in the politics of his over-crowded ward in New York City.  “Come-a!  We drink-a to Americ.  We drink-a to New York.  New York da mos’ reech-a place.”