The wind freshened, and gradually went around into the south-east. The sea was smooth enough at the time we dropped the pilot, but very soon it became rough, and I found the motion too much for me. The fact is, I was having an attack of sea-sickness, and David was undergoing the same experience. Haines noticed our condition, and kindly suggested to the mate that the youngsters had better be sent below. The mate took a good look at us, smiled for an instant, and then said,-- "Bear a hand there, kids, and go below; you'll appear best alone. Go below, both of you." I would have preferred to remain on deck, but the orders were imperative, and besides I was rapidly getting into a condition in which I would be unable to stand. So we disappeared and lay down in our bunks. David pitched headforemost into his sleeping-place as the ship gave a lurch. Under ordinary circumstances I should have laughed at the sight, but at that moment I was in no laughing mood. The bunks in the forecastle, the low deck over our heads, and the swinging lantern were moving in a variety of directions. Everything whirled, including my head, and so rapidly that I thought it a good plan to stand still where I was, and, when my bunk came around, jump into it and be safe. I jumped, but did so at the wrong time, and came down with a sprawl. My success was greater at the next effort, and I landed in the berth. When I got myself stretched out I was as helpless as any of the drunken men had been the day before, and I wondered if it were not the case that they had been sea-sick in anticipation of going to sea, just as one loses his appetite at the expectation of something unpleasant. As for appetite, I had absolutely none. I should have refused the finest viands from a king's kitchen, and even the very thought of eating seemed to add to my illness. Joe Herne came to see if we wanted anything, but there was nothing we cared for; and we made the same answer to Bill when he came in during the next watch to look after us. David whispered to me that he wished himself back at home, and I acknowledged to precisely the same desire. "It's a pity," said David, "that the man who thought we were runaway apprentices did not arrest us, and supply us with masters who would keep us on land." I would willingly have been apprenticed to a cobbler or a traveling tinker rather than be in the predicament where I then found myself. But there's no cloud without a silver lining, and no night that is not followed by day. For about forty hours, it must have been fully that, we lay in our bunks without eating a morsel. By and by our appetites returned, and David said to our friend Bill that he thought he could eat a little gruel. "Gruel, you greenhorn," said Haines, "you'll get no gruel here. What you'll get is scouse and dundy funk, and prog of that sort. Gruel ain't a forecastle dish, anyhow. D'yer think you could manage a bit o' salt horse?"