A similar cabin aft enclosed a like number of males. Amidships, but a story or two higher up, the steerage accommodation was crowded with unattached females and married people with their younger children. Recently used as a transport in the South African War, the _Lake Manitoba_ had had her decks and holds painted a snowy white, and divided into compartments with gunny sacking. Into numbers of these elastic cubicles as many as six married couples were squeezed. Privacy was impossible. No one could undress properly. The drinking water was rotten; the food was worse. The sanitary conveniences would have shamed a monkey cage. The snow-white paint on the woodwork turned out to be merely whitewash, and, when the vessel received a smart smack from a wave, large flakes of it fell off along with the dried undercoat of manure. Up above, the aristocrats travelled first-class. Theirs was the only passenger accommodation the ship really possessed. Nearly everyone aboard could have afforded to travel cabin, but only those whose applications were received first managed to secure the limited number of berths available. The rest--about sixteen hundred of them--put up with the crudest of steerage fare. For an interesting view of life aboard an emigrant ship, the single men's cabin for'ard was unique. All sorts and conditions of British middle-class homes were represented, and although it was rather a lot of men to cram into one room, it speaks well for British love of law and order to record that only eleven fights, seven incipient mutinies, three riots, and twenty-two violent interviews with Barr, the party's leader, occurred during the voyage. This cabin was deep down below the water line. When any of the fellows felt that they needed air, they went up on deck for it. Quite right, too. Why should young single men have things carried down to them? Climbing to the deck for air worked all right for everybody except those who were dying from seasickness, of whom there were about a score. These poor devils stuck in bed throughout the whole of the voyage. Fortunately, the ship crossed in twelve days, so they didn't have to breathe the same air above a million times. This cabin stretched clean across the boat. It was one of the holds. As previously stated, it was well up in front, where the men got a longer ride for their money--up and down, as well as forward. The "beds" were in tiers of three, with long tables placed with charming thoughtfulness down the aisles, so that the seasick sufferers might obtain a clear view of the grub. The occupants of the cabin were pretty quiet during the first couple of days out from Liverpool. The band on the dock had played some haunting melodies, and everyone knows how greatly young single men are affected by such things. Besides, there was only an old plank floor separating them from the place where the bilge was stored.