We anchored near Hart’s Island, and I got on the little steamer, with Captain Collins, and went up to the city. We landed at the foot of Catharine street, and my glad heart never before bounded as it did when, after the perils of the past three weeks, I stepped upon _terra firma_ once more. I felt that I wouldn’t care if somebody would knock a hole in the bottom of the nasty old sea and let all the salty water run out. It isn’t of any use, anyhow, only to raise sharks, and whales, and mermaids, and porpoises, and sea-horses, and sea-serpents, and such like hideous creatures, to float iron-clads and drown people; and for idiots that never saw it to write pretty verses about. I am not habitually a fighting man; on the contrary, quite a peaceably-disposed citizen of the United States; but if I ever come across the cuss that wrote, “A life on the ocean wave,  A home on the rolling deep;  Where the scattered waters rave,  And the winds their revels keep,” I’ll lick him or he’ll lick me! CHAPTER XLV. HO! FOR CALIFORNIA! 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.