" Let me not forget to add,
that it rains every day, that it blows every night, and that it rolls
through the twenty-four hours till the whole world seems as if turned
bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to chaos, and fearing to launch
away. The captain comes and says,--"It is true, you have a nasty, short,
chopping sea hereabouts; but you see, she is spinning away down South
jolly!" And this is the Gulf-Stream!
But all things have an end, and most things have two. After the third
day, a new development manifests itself. Various shapeless masses are
carried upstairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and
to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvae gradually emerge
features and voices,--the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the
thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange
pensive smiles of recognition,--the steward comes, no fiend this time,
but a ministering angel, and, lo! the strong man eats broth, and the
weak woman clamors for pickled oysters. And so ends my description of
our sea-sickness.
For, as for betraying the confidences of those sad days, as for telling
how wofully untrue Professors of Temperance were to their principles,
how the Apostle of Total Abstinence developed a brandy-flask, not
altogether new, what unsuccessful tipplings were attempted in the
desperation of nausea, and for what lady that stunning brandy-smasher
was mixed,--as for such tales out of school, I would have you know that
I am not the man to tell them.
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