Before the first night came, I declared my intention of making no use of the berth assigned to me. Where was I to pass the night then? I said I should pass it on deck. I had a huge great coat, a regular “dreadnought,” so called in those days, and made with innumerable capes; and with that I thought I should do well enough during the September night. My declared intention brought an avalanche of ridicule down on my head, not only from my fellow inhabitants of the steerage, but from the captain and his mates. A night on deck, or at the very most two, would make me glad and thankful enough for the shelter of my berth. I did not know what I was talking of, but should soon find out, &c. Well, the first night passed! It was a fine moonlight. And I enjoyed it and the novelty of my surroundings keenly. I slept, wrapped in my capacious great coat, two or three hours at a time, and morning found me none the worse. The second night was less delightful! I was weary and began to feel the need of sleep after a fashion to which I was more accustomed. And then came bad weather, wet and cold! I got some shelter in an erection on the deck called the “round house;” but the want of proper rest was beginning to tell upon me, and the fatigue was very severe. I think that, despite my horror of the steerage and the world that inhabited it, I should have succumbed and accepted its shelter, if my determination not to do so had been confined to my own breast; and no necessity had existed for triumphing over the ridicule and the unanimous prophecies of the other passengers and the ship’s officers. As it was, I was safe not to yield! I did not yield! Our voyage was rather longer than an average one, and during all the thirty-eight days that it lasted, I never passed a night below, or went there at all save for the purpose of changing my clothes, or attending on my father, who lay sick and suffering in his berth during almost the whole time. It was a severer experience than it may seem probably to the imagination of those who never made a similar experiment. When I reached New York, I felt as if it would be heaven to go to sleep for a week. We had one short spell of very bad weather; and were, as I subsequently learned, in considerable danger for an hour or so. We had been running all day before a fair wind exactly aft, which, continually increasing in violence, assumed at sun-down the force of a gale. Nevertheless Captain Chadwick, against the advice of an old English merchant captain, who was a passenger, could not prevail on himself to lose the advantage of so good a wind, and determined to “carry on.” But as the night advanced the wind continued to increase and the sea to rise, till the danger of being “pooped,” if we continued to run before it, became too great to be neglected. But the danger of putting about, “broaching-to” I believe is the correct term, was also great.