It became necessary however to do this about midnight, and I was the only passenger on deck during the operation. The English merchant captain mentioned above kept running up for a few minutes at a time every now and then. But he had a wife and young children aboard, and would not remain long away from them. The good ship as she came round into the trough of the sea, lay down on her side to such a degree that my body as I clung to the bulwark on the weather-side swung away to the leeward in such sort that I was for a minute hanging from a hold above my head, instead of clinging to one at my side. And I saw and heard--very specially heard--every sail blown away from the yards. I heard, too, the shout of the men on the yards, “We can’t get an inch,” as they strove to reef. Much danger was occasioned to the men by the block at the foot of the mainsail remaining attached to the sail, which was blown about, before it could be secured, with a violence which knocked the cook’s galley to atoms. And all this I saw to my great delight. For I considered a storm at sea as a part of the experiences of a voyage which it would have been a great pity to have missed, and was altogether unaware that we were in any real danger. Towards daybreak the gale moderated, and before noon it was perfectly calm, and all hands were busy in bending a new suite of sails. With all this I should have enjoyed the voyage immensely had it not been for the nature of the companionship to which I should have been condemned if I had not escaped from it in the manner I have described. The utter roughness of the accommodation, the scanty and not very delicate food, would all have signified to me in those days absolutely nothing. But I could not tolerate the companionship of the men and women with whom I should have lived. I could have no doubt tolerated it some twenty years later, but it was at that time too new to me. I take it that ill-luck had given us a rather specially bad lot as our destined companions in the steerage. I had seen quite enough of the labourers on the farm at Harrow to know what a man living with his family on a pound a week was like, and I could have managed to live if necessary with such men for a week or two without any insuperable repugnance. But some of the denizens of that steerage _bolgia_ were blackguards of a description quite new to me.