asked me what I thought of the ship. He said she was a new boat,
and that this was her first voyage.

I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.

He replied: "Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night."

What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to lie down and go
to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that
position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she
could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me
she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished
speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had
very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at
getting out of the water altogether.

And this is what he called being a "bit skittish!"

Seafaring people talk like this, because they are silly, and do not
know any better. It is no use being angry with them.

I got a little sleep at last. Not in the bunk I had been at such
pains to secure: I would not have stopped down in that stuffy
saloon, if anybody had offered me a hundred pounds for doing so.
Not that anybody did; nor that anybody seemed to want me there at
all. I gathered this from the fact that the first thing that met my
eye, after I had succeeded in clawing my way down, was a boot. The
air was full of boots. There were sixty men sleeping there--or, as
regards the majority, I should say TRYING to sleep there--some in
bunks, some on tables, and some under tables. One man WAS asleep,