The gentlemen had breakfasted--baked potatoes and cutlets, ham and eggs,
broiled flounder and other fish, beside tea and coffee--and were entering
the steerage.

Here, to keep from falling, they had to hold fast to the iron posts
supporting the ceiling. After their eyes had grown accustomed to the
twilight always reigning in the steerage, they saw a swarm of human
beings rolling on the floor, groaning, whimpering, wailing, shrieking.
The weather did not permit of the opening of the port-holes, and the
exhalations of about twenty Russian-Jewish families, with bag and baggage
and babies, polluted the air to such an extent, that Frederick could
scarcely breathe. Mothers lying on their backs with open mouths and
closed eyes, more dead than alive, had infants at their breasts; and it
was fearful to see how the retching convulsed them.

"Come," said Doctor Wilhelm, observing something like a tendency to faint
in Frederick's face. "Come, let us show how superfluous we are."

But Doctor Wilhelm and the Red Cross nurse, who accompanied him, had a
chance, here and there, to do some good. He ordered grapes and a tonic
for those who were suffering most. These things were obtained from the
store-rooms of the first and second cabin.

With great difficulty they made their way from section to section.
Everywhere the same misery, the same flight from want and infuriated
persecution. Even the pale faces of those who were able to keep on their
feet and had found a place to stand in that swaying shelf of misery, were
marked by a hopeless, brooding expression of anguish and bitterness.

Among the hundreds of immigrants, there were some pretty girlish faces.