The minutes crept on, but feeling sleepless I had no mind to undress myself. Indeed, I had a longing to go on deck, for the temperature of the berth was uncomfortably warm; I did not know how to open the porthole, nor, though I had been able to open it, should I have dared to do so lest a sudden roll of the ship might submerge the orifice and fill the berth with water. The temptation, therefore, to go on deck was keen, and it was rendered the keener by my hot brow and headache; in imagination I tasted the sweet night wind cool with dew, and beheld the wide-spread splendour cast by the moon upon the vast dark surface of the sea. But then it would shortly be ten o’clock, at which hour a man regularly tapped upon my door and bade me extinguish my lamp; and then, again, I remembered how Mr. Harris and Mrs. Richards had stated that it was against the rules of the ship for women to wander alone upon the decks after the hour for extinguishing the lights had been struck upon the ship’s bell. Suddenly I heard a voice calling down the hatchway at the forward end of the steerage; someone gruffly replied, possibly the man who had been seated reading under the lamp. I paid no heed to these cries; they were frequent enough down in this part of the ship. But about five minutes after the cry had sounded my cabin door was lightly beaten and opened, and Mrs. Richards entered. ‘I am glad to find you dressed,’ she exclaimed. ‘I believed you would have been in bed in spite of your light burning. There is a fine sight to be seen on deck. What do you think it is? A ship on fire! You may make many voyages without seeing such a sight.’ ‘A ship on fire!’ I exclaimed. ‘Oh, I should greatly wish to see it! But it is nearly ten o’clock.’ ‘And what of that?’ said she. ‘Why, did I not understand you to say that women are not allowed to be alone on deck after the lights are out?’ She laughed and answered, ‘The Captain would not like women to be wandering on deck alone at one o’clock in the morning as you were, my dear; but there are always passengers about in warm weather at ten o’clock, and sometimes after midnight, and whilst there are passengers on deck no notice will be taken of your being there.’ ‘If I had known that,’ said I, ‘I should have gone on deck half an hour ago.’