round the walls, 'Ha! the breakfast-room, steward - eh?' We all
foresaw what the answer must be: we knew the agony he suffered.
He had often spoken of THE SALOON; had taken in and lived upon the
pictorial idea; had usually given us to understand, at home, that
to form a just conception of it, it would be necessary to multiply
the size and furniture of an ordinary drawing-room by seven, and
then fall short of the reality. When the man in reply avowed the
truth; the blunt, remorseless, naked truth; 'This is the saloon,
sir' - he actually reeled beneath the blow.

In persons who were so soon to part, and interpose between their
else daily communication the formidable barrier of many thousand
miles of stormy space, and who were for that reason anxious to cast
no other cloud, not even the passing shadow of a moment's
disappointment or discomfiture, upon the short interval of happy
companionship that yet remained to them - in persons so situated,
the natural transition from these first surprises was obviously
into peals of hearty laughter, and I can report that I, for one,
being still seated upon the slab or perch before mentioned, roared
outright until the vessel rang again. Thus, in less than two
minutes after coming upon it for the first time, we all by common
consent agreed that this state-room was the pleasantest and most
facetious and capital contrivance possible; and that to have had it
one inch larger, would have been quite a disagreeable and
deplorable state of things. And with this; and with showing how, -
by very nearly closing the door, and twining in and out like
serpents, and by counting the little washing slab as standing-room,
- we could manage to insinuate four people into it, all at one
time; and entreating each other to observe how very airy it was (in
dock), and how there was a beautiful port-hole which could be kept