A death in the steerage--a passenger taken on board sick at Aspinwall. All day long an inanimate shape wrapped in the American flag lies near the gangway. At four <small>P.M.</small> an assemblage from cabin and steerage gather with uncovered heads. The surgeon reads the service for the dead; a plank is lifted up; with a last shrill whirl that which was once a man is shot into the blue waters; in an instant it is out of sight and far behind, and we retire to our state-rooms, thinking and solemnly wondering about that body sinking, sinking, sinking in the depths of the Caribbean; of the sea monsters that curiously approach and examine it; of the gradual decay of the corpse’s canvas envelope; and far into the night, as the _Ocean Queen_ shoots ahead, our thoughts wander back in the blackness to the buried yet unburied dead. The Torrid Zone is no more. This morning a blast from the north sweeps down upon us. Cold, brassy clouds are in the sky; the ocean’s blue has turned to a dark, angry brown, flecked with white caps and swept by blasts fresh from the home of the northern floe and iceberg. The majority of the passengers gather about the cabin-registers, like the house-flies benumbed by the first cold snap of autumn in our northern kitchens. Light coats, pumps and other summer apparel have given way to heavy boots, over-coats, fur caps and pea-jackets. A home look settles on the faces of the North Americans. They snuff their native atmosphere: they feel its bracing influence. But the tawny-skinned Central Americans who have gradually accumulated on board from the Pacific ports and Aspinwall, settle inactively into corners or remain ensconced in their berths. The air which kindles our energies wilts theirs. The hurricane-deck is shorn of its awnings. Only a few old “shell-back” passengers maintain their place upon it, and yet five days ago we sat there in midsummer moonlit evenings.