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THURSDAY, October 31.

We have been a week at sea. Can it be only seven days since we
waved adieu to bright eyes on the pier? We begin to feel at home
on the ship. The passengers are now known to each other, and
hereafter the days, will slip by faster. I went down with the
doctor and Vandy to see the Chinamen to-day. What a sight! Piled
in narrow cots three tiers deep, with passages between the rows
scarcely wide enough for one to walk, from end to end of the ship
these poor wretches lie in an atmosphere so stifling that I had to
rush up to the deck for air. So far three have died, and two have
become crazy. My foolish curiosity has made the voyage less
satisfactory, for I cannot forget the danger of disease breaking
out among this horde, nor can I drive the yellow, stupid-looking
faces out of mind. The night of the day in which I had gone below
we were playing a rubber of whist in the cabin when the port-hole
at my head was pushed open, and a voice in broken English shouted,
"Crazee manee; he makee firee, firee!" I jumped round and saw a
Chinaman. Such an expression--Shakespeare alone has described it--

"And with a look so piteous in purport,
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors."

Fire! that epitome of all that is appalling at sea, the danger
each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one
way and one another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My
Nannie's awa'" like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in