'He rose from before the mast,' said Mrs. Burke. 'I hope he's a good sailor. This is his first voyage with my husband. He holds a master's certificate, but that don't signify much, I expect. A man wants to know human nature to command a crew of sailors. He's been a common seaman himself, and fared ill, and worked hard on a starvation wage, as most of the poor creatures do, and that's likely to make him hard with the men and unpitying. It's always so. It's the person who's been in service that makes the exacting mistress.' All this she spoke softly. She then inquired of the mate how the weather was on deck. 'Why, not so fine as it is down here, mum,' he answered. 'There's a vast of stars, but 'tis black till the moon comes up.' 'Where are we now?' 'The Girdler ain't far off,' he answered, masticating slowly. 'Is the tug still towing us?' 'Oh, certainly yes, mum!' He did not seem disposed to talk, and answered with grimaces and the awkward air of a man ill at ease. I was looking at his square sturdy figure, with his weather-ploughed face and the muscles all about it working like vigorous pulses to the movement of his jaws, when I felt a slight motion of the ship, a gentle, cradling heave of the deck: the lamp and all things pendulous swayed; creaking noises arose from all parts; a sudden giddiness took me. The movement was repeated with the regularity of a clock's tick. 'Isn't the sea getting up?' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, staring at the gleaming ebony of the skylight windows and then around her. The mate arrested the tumbler whose contents he was turning into his mouth to distend his lips in a grin, which he probably thought concealed. 'Why, I thought we were still in the river!' cried Mrs. Burke again. The mate, picking up his cap, rose, contorted his square figure into a bow to us, and went up the companion-steps. The motion of the vessel affected me. Mrs. Burke got a pillow and made me comfortable on the sofa, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, went on deck. She returned presently and said that the river had widened into a sea, with danger-lights sparkling here and there, and the full moon rising solemnly and beautifully upon the port bow. She hugged herself and said it was blowing fresh, and the ship under several breasts of canvas was chasing the little tug, which was splashing ahead as fast as she could go. 'We're doing between seven and eight miles an hour. Only think!' she cried. 'We shall be opening the lights of Margate very soon. To think of Margate and the sands and the shrimps, and us sailing past it to the other end of the world. How do you feel, my dear?' I answered that I felt sick. 'You will suffer for a day or two,' said she, 'and then you'll take no more notice of it than I do. Hark! what is that?' The sounds proceeded from Mr. Owen's cabin. 'They'll never get a cure for it,' said Mrs. Burke, looking in the direction of the doctor's berth.