"We must be judged by our actions, not by our words," said I. "Sea life gets people into such a way of 'growling' that they never know when to stop finding fault; and if you ask them about any of their circumstances they'll generally give an unfavorable account of them. But after you've been growling about sea life for a whole voyage, you'll get on shore, and in three weeks' time you'll be fretting to be afloat again, and if you don't find a ship pretty soon, you'll growl worse even than you did at sea. But I'll meet you half way and say we _prefer_ to go to sea, in spite of its hardships. Against these we have the offset of seeing foreign countries, the excitement of constant change of place, and the great pleasure of arrivals at home. Now, although what was said about the women may have some truth in it, yet a woman, who loves her husband, may consider his company more than an equivalent for the privations of life on shipboard; and then, in foreign ports she's always made a good deal of, and gets a chance to see everything that's to be seen, and enjoy all the pleasures of foreign life, so that when you compare her life for a year's voyage, with the hum-drum existence she would lead by herself in a small country town; fretting about her good man every time the wind blew hard, being the only excitement she would have in the whole time he was away, and I tell you the seafaring woman has the best of it." "Pretty well argued," said Mr. Morrison, "for a youngster that knows nothing about it." After two months in port the ship was again ready for sea; and after a parting growl with Mr. Smashempotter, the captain came on board with orders to get under way. With a fresh southerly wind we sailed into the Bay, and the City of Genoa disappeared astern, just as the sun went down behind the Apennines. Moderate breezes and pleasant weather brought the ship again in sight of Gibraltar ten days after leaving port, and then a calm took possession of the Straits, and the ship lay helpless at the entrance, slowly drifting back with the current. During this time Capt. Streeter had been remarkably pleasant. He spun long twisters to the second mate and myself, chiefly about his experiences in fighting sailors, and even made advances towards favoring Mr. Morrison in the same way; but was not very successful in this attempt, for whenever the mate detected a lie or misstatement in the captain's narrations, and this was not seldom, he always felt it his duty to contradict it, whereas we appeared to accept everything as gospel. Nothing provoked the captain so much as to have his veracity or knowledge questioned, and this course of the mate's threatened to bring on a relapse of the captain's "tantrums."