ABOUT the middle of April, a little more than a year after my fearful experience on board the Brewster, I might have been seen, (if anybody had been watching), in the vicinity of the Pacific Steamship Company’s buildings, at the foot of Canal street, New York, making inquiry as to the rates of passage from New York to San Francisco. I had about recovered from my maritime scare.

“One hundred dollars, first cabin,” said the clerk; “seventy-five dollars second; and forty dollars steerage. The cabin tickets, however, are all sold. We have but a few steerage tickets left.”

“The deuce!” I exclaimed, forgetting my good manners, in the agony of disappointment.

It was two days prior to the sailing of the Ocean Queen. I did not like the idea of going in the steerage, for I had been informed that it was “rough,” and that even a soldier would find it so; nor did I relish waiting eight days for the next steamer.

“Pshaw!” I ejaculated.

“You wanted a cabin ticket, I suppose?”

“Couldn’t think of going in the steerage; I have distant relations who have been in Congress.”

“You might,” he said, with some hesitation, “be crowded into the cabin, but I have no cabin ticket to sell you. If you will take a steerage ticket, I am confident you can arrange it with the purser to get transferred to the cabin.”

“Do you think so?”

“I am sure of it.”

“Then I will take one.”

I paid forty dollars, and the clerk filled out a steerage ticket for me—which I took with thanks, and walked away, fancying I had learned a great secret.

It was a great secret, for I afterward discovered that it was necessary to intrust it to a great many people in order to have it well kept.

The day the Ocean Queen sailed was a rainy, dismal day. The steamer was crowded, and it required the neatest bit of skill to set one’s crutch down anywhere on the steerage deck without injuring any one’s toes. There were more than fourteen hundred passengers aboard.

The steamer did not get out of the harbor before five o’clock, and the purser being busy collecting tickets, I was unable to see him in order to make that little “arrangement;” and as night closed in and we plunged out among the waves of the mighty deep, I felt myself doomed to “turn in” in the steerage.

How shall I describe that night of horror? It fairly takes away my appetite to think of it! As the shores disappeared in the darkness and distance, a strong wind blew, the waves rolled savagely, then began that pitching and tossing of the vessel so terrible to the stomachs of the unsailor-like.

No sooner had we got “outside” and some slight “motion” was perceptible, than some of the more susceptible passengers grew blue under the eyes and white as a sheet all over the face, and proceeded to manifest their regret for having dined, by violently casting up the masticated provisions, to the celebrated and popular tune of “New York!” Then, as the vessel went plunging on, growing more and more reckless in its manner of tossing itself about, others began to feel the wretched reeling of the brain and morbid heaviness of the stomach—others grew sick, while the already sick grew sicker—others turned deathly pale, groaned in agony, gasped, shrieked “New York!” and let their recently-procured nourishment rush out with a gush, and gush out with a rush; while a wild, agonizing chorus of “O, deary!” “O, Lordy!” “Oo-oo-oo-Godbemerciful,” and the like, resounded and reverberated through the ship, penetrated dark recesses and corners, mingled with the dash of the surging waves without, and the dull splash of repudiated nutrition on the main deck within.

As for myself—I wasn’t exactly sick; I’ll never acknowledge that I was, as long as I live. That I felt slightly indisposed—just enough so not to feel in the humor for receiving visitors—I will not deny; but it was not sea-sickness. It was only a kind of nausea and dizziness, accompanied by violent spasms just beneath the lungs and a rapid ejectment from the stomach of some trifling article of food that didn’t agree with me—under the circumstances. I am subject to these spells—usually on the water. On such occasions, the natural depression of spirits makes me rather morose, and I am not apt to talk much. On the occasion in question, all I said was “New York,” when a man asked another where he was from, and I thought he was talking to me. I should have said “Philadelphia,” instead of “New York,” but I didn’t care much, just then, where I was from. Realizing that I had articulated when I was not spoken to, I was about to excuse myself when the vessel plunged violently, and I simply said, “O, Lordy! Ugh!”

Such was all the conversation I indulged in that night.

I went to the purser next day—late in the day, for I felt better in the afternoon than in the morning—told him the circumstances, and requested him to make that little “arrangement;” stating that I was willing to pay the difference. He said the cabin was crowded, but that, in consideration of about thirty-five dollars, he could probably find me a place. This I paid him; and, to make the matter short, I paid thirty-five more in gold on the other side—that is, from Panama to San Francisco—making in all about one hundred and twenty-five dollars for the luxury of a voyage to San Francisco.

In a day or two, I was able to stagger about the vessel in a very successful manner, considering my means of perambulating, and on the first Sunday out—three days from New York—the weather being fine, I wended my way forward to give a drink of wine to a sick steerage-passenger, and it was on that occasion that I witnessed a very amusing scene which I shall endeavor to describe.

My sick friend was lying on the hurricane deck, shaded by an awning, and very near him were four unchristian-like passengers engaged in the absorbing game of “seven-up.” About that time, a Methodist minister came over from the cabin to conduct a “divine service” or two, and enlighten the benighted steerage-passengers as to the great probability of their losing their immortal souls.

He took his position a little way from our “seven-up” party, gave out a text from memory, and proceeded to preach the gospel—during which the game went on—my attention being divided between it and the sermon.

“My Christian friends,” began the minister, “I would have you know, in the beginning, that ——”

[“You’re bound to trump or follow suit, if you have it,” interrupted one of the card-players.]

“—— There are two ——”

[“Trumps! by jingo!”]

“—— Spheres of existence for all mankind. First ——”

[“Whose deal is it?”]

“—— We are placed on earth to ——”

[“Play for a quarter a game.”]

“—— Live such a life of honesty, integrity, piety, and godliness, ——”

[“Confound such a game!”]

“—— That when we come to ——”

[“Deal a little faster.”]

“—— Leave the scenes of our earthly labors, and trials, and woes, and miseries, we may be ——”

[“Skunked, by thunder!”]

“—— Prepared to enter upon ——”

[“A new game.”]

“—— A new and holy existence among ——”

[“Clubs or spades.”]

“—— The angels.”

[“There! he’s turned a jack!”]

“But what, my thoughtless friends, what will become of the wicked and ungodly man who ——”

[“Deals all the time! That’s three times that I know of!”]

“—— Persists in his evil ways till ——”

[“The trump is turned.”]

“—— The day of judgment? What will be the fate of those who refuse ——”

[“Trump three times!”]

“—— The offers of mercy, and reject the offered salvation till it is forever too late? When the awful ——”

[“Trump!”]

“—— Trumpet shall sound and they are summoned from their graves to answer for ——”

[“Fifty cents: let’s play another.”]

“—— The deeds done in the body, they shall be damb with the consciousness of their guilt, and shall have ——”

[“High, low, jack, and the game! Run ’em.”]

“—— Their part in the lake that burneth with ——”

[“Spades.”]

“—— Fire and brimstone, which is the ——”

[“Third game.”]

“—— Second death!”

[“The deuce. I thought it was the trey.”]

“Now, my friends, you are ——”

[“High, low, to our jack, game.”]

“—— Aware of the uncertainty of life, at all times, but especially at ——”

[“Seven-up.”]

“—— Sea, where ships may ——”

[“Play trump.”]

“—— Go down at any moment, and where those on board may ——”

[“Follow suit.”]

“—— Be hurled upon the merciless waters ——”

[“Without a single trump.”]

“—— Without a straw between them and ——”

[“The end of the game.”]

“—— The awful judgment seat! What would be your cry then?”

[“There now! play the square game, or I won’t play any more!”]

“What could you, who are unprepared to die, say in your defense?”

[“Twenty-nine for game.”]

“Nothing—simply nothing. You could only turn away in shame and wretchedness, and cry ——”

[“We’re out! Fork over the stamps! Don’t let’s play any more; it’s about dinner time.”]

“—— Unto the rocks, ‘Fall on us!’ and unto the hills, ‘Cover us!’”

[“That makes it right. I’m just a dollar ahead.”]

The game now broke up, the sermon, for lack of variety, began to lose its interest, and I returned to the cabin much edified by the preaching and that scientifically played game of “seven-up.”

I will not attempt to give a full account of the incidents of the voyage from New York to Aspinwall—a distance of nineteen hundred and eighty three nautical miles—but will conclude this chapter by mentioning the death of a middle-aged lady, who died the day before our arrival in port. She had been ill of pneumonia for some days, and early on the morning in question she breathed her last, leaving a sorrow-stricken husband and eight children to continue the voyage and life’s cheerless journey, without the light of a wife’s and mother’s smile.

The children were all small—the oldest not more than ten years old—and were not able to realize their loss and their desolate condition; but that heart-broken man, whose haggard face and dark sunken eyes I can never forget, mourned enough for all. Every innocent prattle of the motherless ones was a thrust into his stricken heart, and if they did not weep he wept for them.

I have seen many horrible sights, such as the mangling of men in battle; but I never saw any thing so calculated to make the heart weep as the sorrow of that lone-hearted father of motherless children. Never can I forget how I saw him, just after a dull splash aft of the leeward wheel announced that the corpse had been committed to the deep, come languidly out of his stateroom, surrounded by his wondering little ones, sit down on the deck under the shadow of a companion-way, bury his face in his hands, and weep like a lone and friendless child!

It is sad to see a woman weep; but when a strong man sheds tears they must be wrung out by an anguish of soul too poignant for the simple name of grief!