The boys’ house was about the size of a respectable pig pen--a single pig pen. There was room in it for two boys to turn at once, providing they turned slowly and carefully. On going on board we had bestowed such of our outfit as could be brought into this pen in the manner in which boys of sixteen bestow things generally on first commencing to “keep house.” Everything was arranged on a _terra firma_ basis. We made no calculation for the ship’s deviating from an even keel. When she did commence to pitch everything fell down. Clothing fell on the floor; plates, knives, forks, cups and bottles rolled from shelf and bunk; bread, meat, and the molasses kegs fell; plum and sponge cake, pie and sweetmeats fell; for each boy had a space in his sea-chest filled with these articles, placed there by kind, dear relatives at home. It was intended that we should not refer to them until the ship was far advanced on her voyage. But we never had such large supplies of cake and sweetmeats at hand before; so we went for these things immediately. The house abounded with them the first night out. The roof leaked. We left our sliding-door carelessly open, and a few barrels of the ocean slopped over the bulwarks into the apartment. At midnight our combined clothing, plates, mugs, knives, forks, bottles, water-kegs, combs, hair-brushes, hats, pants, coats, meat, bread, pie, cake, sweetmeats, molasses, salt water, and an occasional seasick and despairing boy, united to form a wet, sodden mass on the floor two feet in depth. Above the storm howled and swept through the rigging, with little sail to interrupt it. Six sick and wretched boys in their berths lay “heads and pints,” as they pack herring; that is, the toe of one rested on the pillow of the other, for it was not possible to lie otherwise in those narrow receptacles for the living. But the horrors of that second night are not to be related.