In plain prose, it was past seven bells, and I (like Mahomet’s coffin) was swinging in the steerage, forgetful of all my cares; whether in my dreams I was wandering once more, as in childhood’s days, by the flowery margin of the silver Avon, listening to the blackbird’s mellow note from the hawthorn dell—lightly footing the Spanish dance in Mangeon’s ball-room at Clifton—or comfortably sipping a cup of bohea in the family circle at home—I do not now well remember: but whatever was the nature of those sweet illusions, they were suddenly dispelled, in the dead of the night, by one of the most fearful agglomerations of stunning sounds that ever broke the slumbers of a cadet: groaning timbers—hoarse shouts—smashing crockery—falling knife-boxes—and the loud gurgling bubble of invading waters—all at once, and with terrible discord, burst upon my astonished ear. Thinking the ship was scuttling, or, that some other (to me unknown) marine disaster was befalling her, I sprung up in a state between sleeping and waking, overbalanced my cot, and was pitched out head-foremost on the deck. Here a body of water, ancle-deep, and washing to and fro, lent a startling confirmation to my apprehensions that the ship was actually _in articulo immersionis_. I struggled to gain my feet, knocked my naked shins against a box of saddlery of the major’s, slipped and slid about on the wet and slimy deck, and finally, my feet flying from under me, came bump down on the broadest side of my person, with stunning emphasis and effect. Another effort to gain the erect position was successful, and, determined to visit the “glimpses of the moon” once more before I became food for fishes, I hurriedly and instinctively scrambled my way towards the companion ladder. Scarcely was I in its vicinity, and holding on by a staunchion, when the vessel gave another profound roll, so deep that the said ladder, being ill-secured, fell over backwards, saluting the deck with a tremendous bang, followed by a second crash, and bubbling of waters effecting a forcible entry. Paralyzed and confounded by this succession of sounds and disasters, I turned, still groping in the darkness, to seek some information touching this uproar, from some one of the neighbouring sleepers. I soon lighted on a hammock, and tracing the mummy-case affair from the feet upwards my hands rested on a cold nose, then a rough curly pate surmounting it, whose owner, snoring with a ten-pig power, would, I verily believe, have slept on had the crash of doom been around him. “Hollo! here,” said I, giving him a shake. A grunt and a mumbled execration were all it elicited. I repeated the experiment, and having produced some symptoms of consciousness, begged earnestly to know if all I had described was an ordinary occurrence, or if we were really going to the bottom. I had now fairly roused the sleeping lion; up he started in a terrible passion; asked me what the deuce made me bother him with my nonsense at that time of night, and