"We had exp experienced a pretty smart shock before coming below which but that we were the most sanguine people living might have prepared us for the Thworst. The imaginative artist to whom I have already made allusion has depicted in the same great work a chamber of almost interminable perspective furnished as Mr. Robins would say in a style of more than Eastern splendour and filled (but not inconveniently so) with groups of ladies and gentlemen in the very highest state of enjoyment and vivacity. Before descending into the bowels of the ship we had passed from the deck into a long narrow apartment not unlike a gigantic hearse with windows in the sides; having at the upper end a melancholy stove at which three or four chilly stewards were warming their hands; while on either side extending down its whole dreary length was a long long table over each of which a rack fixed to the low roof and stuck full of drinking-glasses and cruet-stands hinted dismally at rolling seas and heavy weather."