g for him to hold on by in a heavy sea. By means of this
support, he found that he could moor himself, as it were, quite well,
and keep himself steady when a heavy swell came.

He was not long, however, at rest, for he found that his endeavors to go
to sleep were disturbed by a little door that kept swinging to and fro,
in his state room, as the ship rolled. This was the door of a little
cupboard under the wash stand. When the door swung open, it would strike
against a board which formed the front side of the couch that has
already been described. Then, when the ship rolled the other way, it
would come to, and strike again upon its frame and sill. Rollo endured
this noise as long as he could, and then he resolved to get up and shut
the door. So he put his feet out of his berth upon the floor,--which he
could easily do, as the berth that he was in was the lower one,--and sat
there watching for a moment when the ship should be tolerably still.
When the right moment came, he ran across to the little door, shut it,
and crowded it hard into its place; then darted back to his berth
again, getting there just in time to save a tremendous lurch of the
ship, which would have perhaps pitched him across the state room, if it
had caught him when he was in the middle of the floor.

Rollo did not have time to fasten the little door with its lock; and
this seemed in fact unnecessary, for it shut so hard and tight into its
place that he was quite confident that the friction would hold it, and
that it would not come open again. To his great surprise, therefore, a
few minutes afterwards, he heard a thumping sound, and, on turning over
to see what the cause of it was, he found that the little door was loose
again, and was swinging backward and forward as before. The fact was,
that, although the door had shut in tight at the moment when Rollo had
closed it, the space into which it had been fitted had been opened wider
by the springing of the timbers and framework of the ship at the next
roll, and thus set the door free again. So Rollo had to get up once
more; and this time he locked the door when he had shut it, and so made
it secure.

Still, however, he could not sleep. As soon as he began in the least
degree to lose consciousness, so as to relax his hold upon the knobs of
his cord, some heavy lurch of the sea would come, and roll him
violently from side to side, and thus wake him up again. He tried to
brace himself up with pillows, but