Then you hear every kind of odd noise in the ship--creaking, straining,
crunching, scraping, pounding, whistling, blowing off steam, each of
which to your unpractised ear is significant of some impending
catastrophe; you lie wide awake, listening with all your might, as if
your watching did any good, till at last sleep overcomes you, and the
morning light convinces you that nothing very particular has been the
matter, and that all these frightful noises are only the necessary
attendants of what is called a good run.

Our voyage out was called "a good run." It was voted, unanimously, to be
"an extraordinarily good passage," "a pleasant voyage;" yet the ship
rocked the whole time from side to side with a steady, dizzy, continuous
motion, like a great cradle. I had a new sympathy for babies, poor
little things, who are rocked hours at a time without so much as a "by
your leave" in the case. No wonder there are so many stupid people in
the world.

There is no place where killing time is so much of a systematic and
avowed object as in one of these short runs. In a six months' voyage
people give up to their situation, and make arrangements to live a
regular life; but the ten days that now divide England and America are
not long enough for any thing. The great question is how to get them
off; they are set up, like tenpins, to be bowled at; and happy he whose
ball prospers. People with strong heads, who can stand the incessant
swing of the boat, may read or write. Then there is one's berth, a
never-failing resort, where one may analyze at one's leisure the life
and emotions of an oyster in the mud. Walking the deck is a means of
getting off some half hours more. If a ship heaves in sight, or a
porpoise tumbles up, or, better still, a whale spouts, it makes an