This was the startling effect of the cessation of motion.

We had been so long upon the moving, rocking sea that the stable land was a shock to us.

We expected the beach to lift up this way and that, and the rocky walls to swing back and forth like the sides of a ship; and when we braced ourselves, automatically, for these various expected movements, their non-occurrence quite overcame our equilibrium.
"I really must sit down," Maud said, with a nervous laugh and a dizzy gesture, and forthwith she sat down on the sand.
I attended to making the boat secure and joined her.

Thus we landed on Endeavour Island, as we came to it, land-sick from long custom of the sea..