48 Im November 1845

Not until evening when the storm was still more violent did some sailors, who were known to be great adventurers and who made little of danger, come to get me. Alone in the very stormy and dark night, of which darkness was increased by the gloomy overcast sky, and by the circumstance that the sailors had been drinking, I held it to be wiser to rather stay on land than to trust myself to the great darkness of the stormy sea and the hands of daring and drunken sailors. The hotel Washington, where I with my Julius, Wamel, and seven other passengers from other ships wanted to spend the night, was already so filled with visitors staying overnight, that the German innkeeper did not want to grant our attempt to spend the night with him, because all night's lodgings at his disposal were already given to strangers, and cleared his house for shelter for us only after we gave the explanation that we did not demand any special night's lodgings but would be satisfied with the coffee-room and the benches and chairs in it. We drank to that, a few bottles of red wine together, of which here a bottle costs 25 cents or about 11 silver Groschen. Here in the best hotel of the city where there is very much traffic, the wine was very expensive like everything else; in other houses one obtains a bottle of the same kind of quality for 15 cents (6 1/2 silver Groschen). Yes, even for 10 cents (4 silver Groschen 5 Pfennigs)(11). Around 10 o’clock, after all had gone to rest, the innkeeper led us out of the coffee-room into a long big hall, in the middle of which there was a covered, long table with very many chairs at which the guests usually eat. This hall he assigned to us for night quarters with the direction: that we could use the chairs as we liked for night's lodging, but he laid a blanket of fur on the earthen floor in a corner of the room, laid down on it, covered himself with the other half of the blanket, and spent the night with us there, only with the difference, that he could sleep warm and tranquil all night long, we on the contrary, could not conceal ourselves from the cold, rather had to walk up and down the room all night to warm ourselves, only somewhat.

(11) Pfennig-a small German copper coin worth one-hundredth part of a Mark. (Mark-a silver German coin worth 24 cents).