We lay fifteen days at the Port of Sulina. At length our wine was exhausted, and even our provisions ran short; for the bakers lazily refused to bake us any bread, though the captain himself went to parley with them. We got a little stringy fresh meat now and then, with sometimes a fresh fish; but we lived chiefly on raw ham and ship’s biscuits. The steward--a plump, tight, rich-complexioned Sancho Panza, with sleek black hair and small roguish eyes--having the distribution of these delicacies, became a man of importance, and found it a very good business. Our fore-cabin passengers suffered severely. They watched us of the after cabin with famished and hateful looks as we went down to dinner; for their own meals were infinitely more scanty than ours. The small supply of orthodox food which the Jews also had brought with them being nearly exhausted, the Greeks, who have a traditional hatred of the chosen people, taunted them with offers of pork. It was at once ludicrous and pathetic to see the feverish trembling indignation, and hear the odd anathemas with which the children of Israel garrulously replied. Upon the whole, our position was not so cheerful and exhilarating as might have been desired by persons fond of comfort and gaiety. To make it the less inviting, cholera gadded about the neighbourhood with great activity, and did not contribute materially to raise our spirits, nor increase our current fund of pleasing anecdote. A guest of our captain, in sound health and with a noticeable appetite, came and sat with us at dinner one day. On the next day we asked whether he was coming to dinner again, and we were told he was buried. One of our passengers died at breakfast in the midst of us. Moreover, it was an awful sort of thing to wake in the small hours of the night and hear a man in the next cabin bemoaning his crimes in a strange tongue; calling on the saints for mercy, under an impression (likely enough to be true) that he was attacked by the swift destroyer, and was hastening with panic-stricken steps on his journey to another world. Therefore I was truly thankful when the wind at last abated. It was sometime, however, even then, before our troubles were over; for there was such a heavy swell that no boat, with sail or oar, dared venture to convey us from one steamer to the other. A steam-tug would have done our business in half an hour; but there was no steam-tug. It was not until the seventeenth day after our arrival that we were at length delivered from durance. The sea having then grown calmer (though still running very high) we fired a gun and hoisted signals for the packet that was to convey us to Constantinople, and which had returned to her anchorage. So she stood nearer in towards us about mid-day; then one half of the passengers who had left Galatz with us, nearly three weeks before, on urgent business, returned whence they came, having missed their opportunities. The others--I among the number--went over the bar.