To own the truth, Mrs. Budd was not quite as much at ease, in her new station, for the first half hour, as she had fancied to herself might prove to be the case.  It was a flat calm, it is true; but the widow felt oppressed with responsibility and the novelty of her situation.  Time and again had she said, and even imagined, she should be delighted to fill the very station she then occupied, or to be in charge of a deck, in a “middle watch.”  In this instance, however, as in so many others, reality did not equal anticipation.  She wished to be doing everything, but did not know how to do anything.  As for Biddy, she was even worse off than her mistress.  A month’s experience, or for that matter a twelvemonth’s, could not unravel to her the mysteries of even a schooner’s rigging.  Mrs. Budd had placed her “at the wheel,” as she called it, though the vessel had no wheel, being steered by a tiller on deck, in the ’long-shore fashion.  In stationing Biddy, the widow told her that she was to play “tricks at the wheel,” leaving it to the astounded Irish woman’s imagination to discover what those tricks were.  Failing in ascertaining what might be the nature of her “tricks at the wheel,” Biddy was content to do nothing, and nothing, under the circumstances, was perhaps the very best thing she could have done.

Little was required to be done for the first four hours of Mrs. Budd’s watch.  All that time, Rose slept in her berth, and Mulford and Jack Tier on their sail, while Biddy had played the wheel a “trick,” indeed, by lying down on deck, and sleeping, too, as soundly as if she were in the county Down itself.  But there was to be an end of this tranquillity.  Suddenly the wind began to blow.  At first, the breeze came in fitful puffs, which were neither very strong nor very lasting.  This induced Mrs. Budd to awaken Biddy.  Luckily, a schooner without a topsail could not very well be taken aback, especially as the head-sheets worked on travellers, and Mrs. Budd and her assistant contrived to manage the tiller very well for the first hour that these varying puffs of wind lasted.  It is true, the tiller was lashed, and it is also true, the schooner ran in all directions, having actually headed to all the cardinal points of the compass, under her present management.  At length, Mrs. Budd became alarmed.  A puff of wind came so strong, as to cause the vessel to lie over so far as to bring the water into the lee scuppers.  She called Jack Tier herself, therefore, and sent Biddy down to awaken Rose.  In a minute, both these auxiliaries appeared on deck.  The wind just then lulled, and Rose, supposing her aunt was frightened at trifles, insisted on it that Harry should be permitted to sleep on.  He had turned over once, in the course of the night, but not once had he raised his head from his pillow.