I now began to feel unsettled and ill at ease about the stomach, as if
matters were all topsy-turvy there; and felt strange and giddy about the
head; and so I made no doubt that this was the beginning of that
dreadful thing, the sea-sickness. Feeling worse and worse, I told one of
the sailors how it was with me, and begged him to make my excuses very
civilly to the chief mate, for I thought I would go below and spend the
night in my bunk. But he only laughed at me, and said something about my
mother not being aware of my being out; which enraged me not a little,
that a man whom I had heard swear so terribly, should dare to take such
a holy name into his mouth. It seemed a sort of blasphemy, and it seemed
like dragging out the best and most cherished secrets of my soul, for at
that time the name of mother was the center of all my heart's finest
feelings, which ere that, I had learned to keep secret, deep down in my
being.

But I did not outwardly resent the sailor's words, for that would have
only made the matter worse.

Now this man was a Greenlander by birth, with a very white skin where
the sun had not burnt it, and handsome blue eyes placed wide apart in
his head, and a broad good-humored face, and plenty of curly flaxen
hair. He was not very tall, but exceedingly stout-built, though active;
and his back was as broad as a shield, and it was a great way between
his shoulders. He seemed to be a sort of lady's sailor, for in his
broken English he was always talking about the nice ladies of his
acquaintance in Stockholm and Copenhagen and a place he called the Hook,
which at first I fancied must be the place where lived the hook-nosed
men that caught fowling-pieces and every other article that came along.
He was dressed very tastefully, too, as if he knew he was a good-looking