Then the mortal perils of eating, drinking, moving, sitting, lying;
standing can't be done, even by the sailors, without holding on.
THE night of the gale, my cot twice touched the beams of the ship
above me. I asked the captain if I had dreamt it, but he said it
was quite possible; he had never seen a ship so completely on her
beam ends come up all right, masts and yards all sound.

There is a middy about half M-'s size, a very tiny ten-year-older,
who has been my delight; he is so completely 'the officer and the
gentleman'. My maternal entrails turned like old Alvarez, when
that baby lay out on the very end of the cross-jack yard to reef,
in the gale; it was quite voluntary, and the other newcomers all
declined. I always called him 'Mr. -, sir', and asked his leave
gravely, or, on occasions, his protection and assistance; and his
little dignity was lovely. He is polite to the ladies, and
slightly distant to the passenger-boys, bigger than himself, whom
he orders off dangerous places; 'Children, come out of that; you'll
be overboard.'

A few days before landing I caught a bad cold, and kept my bed. I
caught this cold by 'sleeping with a damp man in my cabin', as some
one said. During the last gale, the cabin opposite mine was
utterly swamped, and I found the Irish soldier-servant of a little
officer of eighteen in despair; the poor lad had got ague, and
eight inches of water in his bed, and two feet in the cabin. I
looked in and said, 'He can't stay there--carry him into my cabin,
and lay him in the bunk'; which he did, with tears running down his
honest old face. So we got the boy into S-'s bed, and cured his
fever and ague, caught under canvas in Romney Marsh. Meantime S-
had to sleep in a chair and to undress in the boy's wet cabin. As