retract the charge to hush the man up.  She seemed to think her troubles had just begun.  If they behaved thus to her on the little tug, what would they not do on board the great black steamer itself?  So when she got separated from her luggage in getting aboard the vessel, her excitement was great, and I met her following about the man whom she had accused of filching her bed linen, as if he must have the clew to the lost bed itself.  Her face brightened when she saw me, and, giving me a terribly hard wink and a most expressive nudge, she said she wished I would keep near her a little.  This I did, and soon had the pleasure of leaving her happy and reassured beside her box and bundle.

The passage home, though a rough one, was cheerfully and patiently borne.  I found a compound motion,—­the motion of a screw steamer, a roll and a plunge—­less trying to my head than the simple rocking or pitching of the side-wheeled Scotia.  One motion was in a measure a foil to the other.  My brain, acted upon by two forces, was compelled to take the hypothenuse, and I think the concussion was considerably diminished thereby.  The vessel was forever trembling upon the verge of immense watery chasms that opened now under her port bow, now under her starboard, and that almost made one catch his breath as he looked into them; yet the noble ship had a way of skirting them or striding across them that was quite wonderful.  Only five days was, I compelled to “hole up” in my stateroom, hibernating, weathering the final rude shock of the Atlantic.  Part of this time I was capable of feeling a languid interest in the oscillations of my coat suspended from a hook in the door.  Back and forth, back and forth, all day long, vibrated this black pendulum, at long intervals touching the sides of the room, indicating great lateral or diagonal motion of the ship.  The great waves, I observed, go in packs like wolves.  Now one would pounce upon her, then another, then another, in quick succession, making the ship strain every nerve to shake them off.  Then she would glide along quietly for some minutes, and my coat would register but a few degrees in its imaginary arc, when another band of the careering demons would cross our path and harass us as before.  Sometimes they would pound and thump on the sides of the vessel like immense sledge-hammers, beginning away up toward the bows and quickly running down her whole length, jarring, raking, and venting their wrath in a very audible manner; or a wave would rake along the side with a sharp, ringing, metallic sound, like a huge spear-point seeking a vulnerable place; or some hard-backed monster would rise up from the deep and grate and bump the whole length of the keel, forcibly suggesting hidden rocks and consequent wreck and ruin.