Oilskinned, "sou'westered," sea-booted men, sitting and lying on benches and tables, was the first strange thing that came to my attention; and then, with a swish and a gurgle, the foot-deep wave of dirty water which had driven them there caught me about the knees, and sat me down upon a pile of hammocks, or, rather, across the inert bodies of two men (boys I found them to be presently) who had been cast away there in advance of me. Clambering over their unprotesting anatomies, I gained dry land at a higher level, and at a tactically defensible point, where a half-Nelson round a stanchion steadfastly refused to give way under the double back-action shuffle with which the next roll tried to break it. With two good toe-holds making me safe from practically anything but a roll to her beams' ends, I was free to survey the shambles at my leisure. Then I saw how the havoc was being wrought. With a shuddering crash, the thousand-ton bludgeon of a wave struck along the port side, immediately followed by the muffled but unmistakable sound of water rushing in upon the deck above. To the accompaniment of a wild slap-banging, this sound came nearer, and then, as she heeled far to starboard under the impulse of the blow that had been dealt her, a solid spout of green water came tumbling down a hatchway--the fount from which the mobile tidal wave swaggering about the deck took replenishment. Two men, worrying a side of frozen Argentine bullock along to the galley from the cold-storage hold, timing (or, rather, mis-timing) their descent to coincide with that of the young Niagara, reached the mess-deck in the form of a beef sandwich. Depositing that delectable morsel in an inert mass at the foot of the ladder, the briny cascade, with a joyous whoof, rushed down to reinforce the tidal wave and do the rounds of the mess. I was now able to observe that the sailors, marooned on the benches, tables, and other islands of refuge, were roughly dividable into three classes--the prostrate ones, who heaved drunkenly to the roll and took no notice of the primal chaos about them; the semi-prostrate ones, who were still able to exhibit mild resentment when the tidal wave engulfed or threatened to engulf them; and the others--some lounging easily, but the most perched or roosted on some dry but precarious pinnacle--who quaffed great mugs of hot tea and bit hungrily into hunks of bread and smoked fish. These latter--hard-bit tars they were, with faces pickled ruddy by the blown brine of many windy watches--took great joy of the plight of their mates, guffawing mightily at the dumb misery in the hollow eyes of the "semi-prostrates" and the dead-to-the-world roll of "prostrates" with the reelings of the ship.