The String of Pearls (1850), p. 711

splash against the closed shutter of the cabin-window warned him that that sea was not in one of its quietest moods.
"We are off!" cried Todd, in the exultation of his spirits at that fact. "We are off, and I am all but free."
He attempted to get out of the berth, and he was materially assisted by a roll of the sea that sent him to the other side of the cabin, accompanied by a couple of stools and several articles that happened to be lying loose upon the floor.
"Murder!" cried Todd.
"Hilloa!" cried a gruff voice from the companion-way. "Hilloa! What now?"
"Oh, nothing," said Todd, "Nothing. Where are we now? Oh, dear, what a thing it is to live in a cupboard that won't stand still."
The gleam of a lantern flashed in Todd's eyes, and the captain came below with it swinging in his hand. He steadied himself against the table, which was firmly screwed to the floor, and hung the lantern to a short chain dependent from the cabin-roof.
"There," said the captain. "The chandelier is alight now, and you will be able to see about you. Hilloa! Where are you now?"
"Why, I rather think I fell off the shelf," said Todd. "I beg your pardon, the state berth I mean."
''Then you had better turn in again, for we shall have, I think, a squally sort of night rather. There are symptoms of a sou'wester, and if so, you will know a little of what weather is in the Channel."
"Where are we now?" said Todd, mournfully.
"About fifteen miles off the North Foreland, so we are tolerably quiet just yet ; but when we turn the head of the land, it's likely enough we may find out what the wind means to say to us."
While the captain spoke, he tugged on a complete suit of waterproof apparel, that seemed as thick and inflexible as so much armour covered with tar, and then up he went upon deck again, leaving Todd to the society of his own reflections and the chandelier.
The Lively William was going en just then with a flowing sheet, so that she was carrying a tolerably even keel, and Todd was able to get up and reach his berth; but at the moment that he laid hold of the side of it to clamber in, the ship was tacked, and away went Todd to the opposite side of the state-cabin with the rug in his grasp that did duty as a counterpane in the berth.
"This will kill me," he groaned. "Oh, this will kill me. But yet—yet I am escaping, and that is something. There will be a storm, but all ships are not lost that encounter storms."
Todd made up his mind to remain where he was, jammed up against the cabin partition, until the ship should right itself sufficiently for him to make another effort to reach his berth.
After a few minutes he thought he would make the attempt.
"Now," he said. " Now, surely, I can do it. I will try. How the wind howls, to be sure, and how the waves dash against the ship's sides, as though they would stave in her timbers; but all is well, no doubt. I will try again."
Very cautiously now Todd crept to his berth, and this time the winds and the waves were kind enough only to move the ship so that he knocked his head right and left a little, and managed then to scramble on to the little inconvenient shelf, with its damp mattress that served for a bed.
"Ah," said Todd, " and there are people who might, if they liked, stay on land all their lives, and yet they pretend to prefer the sea. There's no accounting for tastes."
By dint of jerking it a little from under him, Todd propped the mattress against the outer edge of the berth; so that provided the vessel did lurch in that direction, it was not so likely to tumble him out, and there he lay listening to the winds and the waves.
"A storm in the Channel!" he muttered. "From what that beast of a cap