You see, the tide was coming up, and all this floating ice that had come down, out of the Ouse and Trent, was being brought back again from Humber's mouth. Pretty nigh high water it was, but we started a little sooner, so as to see our way through the ice before night came on; and as I stood on deck, having come up for a moment or two, of all the dreary sights I ever saw that was the worst. Far as eye could reach there was ice-covered water, mist, and the heavy clouds seeming to settle down upon the distant banks. It was getting fast on towards evening, and seeing me up, the captain began to talk a bit about the state of the river, and whether we hadn't better anchor, while I could hardly hear him from the clattering noise made by the paddle-floats upon the ice. "Cold place to anchor," I says, as I looked round the deck; and then I says, "Be clearer as soon as we gets nearer Grimsby." So we kept on, and I went down to join my stoker giving an eye to the engine, and after a few words I went up again and took a look about me. And what a wretched lookout the deck of a Hull boat is. You see it's a cheap way of getting up to London, and parliamentary trains ain't nowhere in comparison for cheapness, so that you have rather a poor lot of passengers; and then, what with the cargo, and one thing and another, always including the poor folks as is sick, and them as is trying to make themselves so, why, you may find much pleasanter places than the deck of a Hull steamer. But, there, the deck's bad enough, so what do you suppose the fore-cabin is? It's enough to make your heart bleed sometimes to see the poor miserable-looking objects we have on board, some half-clothed and looking less than half-fed as they crouch about the deck or huddle down in the cabin. Then there's always a lot of children, and the poor, tired, cold, hungry little things soon let you know as they're on board, and very loudly, too, making every one else miserable and wretched into the bargain. I'd been giving an eye to all this, and thinking how very much pleasanter everything would have been if we had had a fine summer's evening for our voyage, when all at once, above the rattle and clatter of the ice amongst the paddles, I heard a horrible wild shriek from just over the side of the ship. Like half a dozen more, I ran to the side directly, and looked over, when just at the same moment I saw two men standing up in a little boat--one a sailor chap or boatman, and the other evidently a passenger; for in the glance I took I could see a bag and a box in the boat. No doubt they had been hailing, but the noise of the paddles stopped any one from hearing, while the coming evening prevented any one from seeing them till they were close on to us, and the little boat gliding along the ship's side in company with the ice.