"And you mean to take this big steamboat right through it with me on board?"
He laughed right there in my frightened and pale face.
"I really don't know any other way to reach New York," says he.
"Let me ashore," says I, a starting up, "me and my hair-trunk; I don't care for the produce; it may serve to cool their tongues down there. But put me and my hair trunk on any land. It is all I ask."
"It's impossible," says he.
"But I won't go through that in—that awful gate," says I.
"Why, we are in it now; don't you see the whirl of the waters?"
"In it now. Oh, mercy!"
I fell down upon my seat, and buried my face in my shawl, shaking from head to foot.
Sisters, that cruel man laughed. O, how hardened he must have got, going through that sulphurious gate.