"There was the other day at breakfast you know, we had all the cabin windows shut up at eight o'clock in the morning, which they called putting in the dead-lights--(I cannot see why shutters should be called lights)--and they put the lid on the skylight, and made it so dark that we had to breakfast with lamps. There must have been some strange mismanagement, or we need not have been put to all that inconvenience; and then when the ship almost fell over, they let a great flood of sea come pouring down among us, sweeping the plates off the table, and washing the very cups out of our hands, and filling our mouths with salt water, and ruining our dresses. I wonder what my friend Mrs. Danks, of Crutched Friars, would say if she had all this to go through--she that is so afraid of the water, she won't go over London Bridge for fear it should break down with her, and therefore visits nobody that lives in the Borough--there now--a rock again! I wish I was in St. Paul's Church Yard! Dear me!--what will become of us?" "Upon my word I can't tell," said that gentleman, as he rose and walked out on deck. I then endeavoured to set the old lady right, by explaining to her that the business of the man at the wheel was to steer the vessel, and that he was not always the same person, the helmsman being changed at regular periods. I also made her understand that the captain only meant to ask in what direction was the head of the ship--and that "port--port," signified that he should put up the helm to the larboard or left side. I could not forbear repeating to Captain Santlow the ludicrous mistake of Mrs. Cummings, and her unfounded sympathy for the man at the wheel. He laughed, and said it reminded him of a story he had heard concerning an old Irish woman, a steerage passenger, that early in the morning after a stormy night, was found by the mate, cautiously creeping along the deck and looking round at every step, with a bottle of whiskey half-concealed under her apron. On the mate asking her what she was going to do with the whiskey, she replied, "I'm looking for that cratur Bill Lay, that ye were all calling upon the whole night long, and not giving him a minute to rest himself. I lay in my bed and I heard ye tramping and shouting over head!--'twas nothing but Bill Lay[82] here, and Bill Lay there, and Bill Lay this, and Bill Lay that--and a weary time he's had of it--for it was yourselves that could do nothing without him, great shame to ye. And I thought I'd try and find him out, the sowl, and bring him a drop of comfort, for it's himself that nades it." [Footnote 82: Belay--a sea-term, signifying to secure or make fast a rope.]