and became invisible, though not
necessarily inaudible; a few, who were happily weather-proof, jammed
themselves into velvety corners, held on to something fixed, and lost
themselves in books. The gentlemen, linking themselves to articles of
stability, did the same, or, retiring to an appropriate room, played
cards and draughts and enveloped themselves in smoke. Few, if any of
them, bestowed much thought on the weather. Beyond giving them,
occasionally, a little involuntary exercise, it did not seriously affect
them.

Very different was the state of matters in the steerage. There the
difference in comfort was not proportioned to the difference in
passage-money. There was no velvet, not much light, little space to
move about, and nothing soft. In short, discomfort reigned, so that the
unfortunate passengers could not easily read, and the falling of tin
panikins and plates, the crashing of things that had broken loose, the
rough exclamations of men, and the squalling of miserable children,
affected the nerves of the timid to such an extent that they naturally
took the most gloomy view of the situation.

Of course the mere surroundings had no influence whatever on the views
held by Bob Massey and Joe Slag.

"My dear," said the latter, in a kindly but vain endeavour to comfort
Mrs Mitford, "rumpusses below ain't got nothin' to do wi' rows
overhead--leastways they're only an effect, not a cause."

"There! there's another," interrupted Mrs Mitford, with a little
scream, as a tremendous crash of crockery burst upon her ear.

"Well, my dear," said Slag, in a soothing, fatherly tone, "if all the
crockery in the ship was to go in universal smash into the lee scuppers,
it couldn't make the wind blow harder."

Poor Mrs Mitford failed to derive consolation from this remark. She
was still sick enough to be totally and hopelessly wretched, but not
sufficiently so to be indifferent to life or death. Every superlative
howl of the blast she echoed with a sigh, and each excessive plunge of
the ship she emphasised with a weak scream.

"I don't know what _you_ think," she said, faintly, when two little boys
rolled out of their berths and went yelling to leeward with a mass of
miscellaneous rubbish, "but it do seem to be as if the end of the world
'ad come. Not that the sea _could_ be the end of the world, for if it
was, of course it would spill over and then we would be left dry on the
bottom--or moist, if not dry. I don'