When night came on, we were constrained to find lodgings in the hold as best we could; and, selecting the softest spots and most eligible corners among the casks and boxes which composed the freight list, we passed part of the night in much the same manner as before. But, as the skipper had predicted, the breeze freshened during the night, and the old sloop, feeling the benefit of it, and diving smartly into a head sea, furnished the majority of us employment in casting up our accounts, and admonished us that all bodies, not excepting the solid earth, are subject to upheavings when shaken to their centres. Some of us, who had crawled on deck to get the fresh air, furnished, by our own rueful and woe-begone appearance, rare food for merriment to the old mate, a veteran of nearly the same date as his commander, who in a rough pea-jacket and slouched sou'wester, stood, statue-like, braced up against the tiller, apparently as immovable as the rock of ages. "Ah, boys," said the jolly old salt, "so the Liddy Ann is breaking you in, eh? Well, you've got to go through it, all of ye, and it's better to have it over now, when you've got no duty to attend to, than to begin it in the Gulf stream, when there'll be, maybe, topsails to reef, and a slatting jib to be got in on a slippery boom." He advised us, moreover, to try the experiment of attaching a piece of fat pork, previously dipped in molasses, to a string, swallowing the precious morsel and pulling it up again, repeating the operation as often as the symptoms returned, which mode of proceeding, he solemnly assured us, had been proved to be an invaluable specific, in cases of this kind, as could be attested by the experience of thousands of sufferers. The victims were slow to avail themselves of this information, not so much from any doubt of its efficacy, as from sheer inability to make the necessary exertion to prepare the medicine.