But my descent of the steps carried me out of earshot of this interesting talk. My cabin was well aft. There was a fairly wide corridor, and the berths were ranged on either hand of it. From some of them, as I made my way along, came in muffled sounds various notes of lamentation and suffering. A black woman, with a ring through her nose and her head draped in white, sat on the deck in front of the closed door of a berth, moaning in a sea-sick way over a baby that she rocked in her arms, and that was crying at the top of its pipes. The door of a cabin immediately opposite opened, and a young fellow with a ghastly face putting his head out exclaimed in accents strongly suggestive of nausea: ‘I thay, confound it! thtop that noithe, will you? The rolling ith bad enough without _that_ thindy. Thteward!’ The ship gave a lurch, and he swung out, but instantly darted back again, being indeed but half clothed: ‘I thay, are _you_ the thteward?’ ‘No,’ said I. ‘Keep on singing out. Somebody’ll come to you.’ ‘Won’t they thmother that woman?’ he shouted, and he would have said more, but a sudden kickup of the ship slammed his cabin door for him, and the next moment my ear caught a sound that indicated too surely his rashness in leaving his bunk. I entered my berth, and found the lamp alight in it, and the young gentleman who was to share the cabin with me sitting in his bedstead, that was above mine, dangling his legs over the edge of it, and gazing with a disordered countenance upon the deck. I had chatted with him during the afternoon and had learnt who he was. Indeed, his name was in big letters upon his portmanteau--‘The Hon. Stephen Colledge;’ and incidentally he had told me that he was a son of Lord Sandown, and that he was bound to India on a shooting tour. He was a good-looking young man, with fair whiskers, white teeth, a genial smile, yet with something of affectation in his way of speaking. ‘It’s doocid rough, isn’t it, Mr. Dugdale?’ said he; ‘and isn’t it raining?’ ‘No,’ said I. ‘Oh, but look at the glass here,’ he exclaimed, indicating the scuttle or porthole, the thick glass of which showed gleaming, but black as coal against the night outside. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘the wet there is the sea; it is spray; nothing but spray.’ ‘Hang all waves!’ he said in a low voice. ‘Why the dickens can’t the ocean always be calm? If I’d have known that this ship pitched so, I’d have waited for a steadier vessel. Will you do me the kindness to lift the lid of that portmanteau? You’ll find a flask of brandy in it. Hang me if I like to move. Sorry now I didn’t bring a cot, though they’re doocid awkward things to get in and out of.’ I found the flask, and gave it to him, and he took a pull at it. I declined his offer of a dram, and went to work to stow away some odds and ends which were in my trunk. ‘Don’t you feel ill?’ said he. ‘No,’ said I. ‘Oh, ah, I remember now!’ he exclaimed; ‘you were a sailor once, weren’t you?’