“A little experience of my own. I was, a year or two ago, on board a small steamer bound from the Tyne to Antwerp. There were only five first-class passengers, all of them ladies. We had but been at sea about three hours when a terrific storm arose, which speedily threatened to sink our ship. The wind howled, the rain poured in torrents, the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, the ship played such a fine game at pitch and toss, that everything breakable was smashed to atoms, and we seemed to be oftener standing on our heads than on our heels, or would have been, if we had been able to stand at all. Soon after the storm began the steamer’s wooden deck groaned and creaked awfully, and the timbers, as if afraid that we were not fully realising the dangers of our position, considerately gaped in a score of places, so that whether we were in our bunks, or whether we were in the saloon, it was all the same--we were so copiously supplied with the elemental fluid that our clothes and bedding were saturated. Three of the ladies sat, shivering and miserable, holding on to the cabin table, and hoping for the advent of the steward with news of a probable improvement in the weather. Near them sat the stewardess, in as helpless a condition as they were. Even if she had cared to risk an attempt to go on deck, she could not have done so, as we were battened down, there being some fear lest the little ship, in her crazy pitchings and rollings, would ship the cabin full of water and swamp us all. Cooking and attendance were all postponed for the time being, ‘for,’ as the stewardess coolly remarked, ‘what was the use of trying to prepare a meal if you were to be drowned directly afterwards?’ “Three of the passengers, including myself, were lying in bunks, so sick and ill that we could do nothing whatever. I do not know whether I was worse than the others or not, but it is certain that I was too helpless to lift the eau-de-Cologne bottle that was lying by my side, although I longed for the use of some of its contents, thinking that it might, perhaps, help to remove the deadly faintness by which I was overpowered. After several hours of this misery the steward came to us for a minute, but did not render us any service. Asked by the stewardess what was thought of the chances of survival by those on deck, he replied that pretty nearly everybody on deck looked for the end every minute. Then we were left to our own reflections again.