American Notes | Page 9

the ship were
made of wicker-work; and now crackled, like an enormous fire of the
driest possible twigs. There was nothing for it but bed; so I went to bed.

It was pretty much the same for the next two days, with a tolerably fair
wind and dry weather. I read in bed (but to this hour I don't know what)
a good deal; and reeled on deck a little; drank cold brandy-and-water
with an unspeakable disgust, and ate hard biscuit perseveringly: not ill,
but going to be.
It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my sleep by a dismal
shriek from my wife, who demands to know whether there's any danger.
I rouse myself, and look out of bed. The water-jug is plunging and
leaping like a lively dolphin; all the smaller articles are afloat, except
my shoes, which are stranded on a carpet-bag, high and dry, like a
couple of coal-barges. Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and
behold the looking-glass, which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast upon
the ceiling. At the same time the door entirely disappears, and a new
one is opened in the floor. Then I begin to comprehend that the
state-room is standing on its head.
Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all compatible with
this novel state of things, the ship rights. Before one can say 'Thank
Heaven!' she wrongs again. Before one can cry she IS wrong, she
seems to have started forward, and to be a creature actually running of
its own accord, with broken knees and failing legs, through every
variety of hole and pitfall, and stumbling constantly. Before one can so
much as wonder, she takes a high leap into the air. Before she has well
done that, she takes a deep dive into the water. Before she has gained
the surface, she throws a summerset. The instant she is on her legs, she
rushes backward. And so she goes on staggering, heaving, wrestling,
leaping, diving, jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling, and rocking: and
going through all these movements, sometimes by turns, and
sometimes altogether: until one feels disposed to roar for mercy.
A steward passes. 'Steward!' 'Sir?' 'What IS the matter? what DO you
call this?' 'Rather a heavy sea on, sir, and a head-wind.'
A head-wind! Imagine a human face upon the vessel's prow, with
fifteen thousand Samsons in one bent upon driving her back, and
hitting her exactly between the eyes whenever she attempts to advance
an inch. Imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and artery of her
huge body swollen and bursting under this maltreatment, sworn to go
on or die. Imagine the wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating:
all in furious array against her. Picture the sky both dark and wild, and

the clouds, in fearful sympathy with the waves, making another ocean
in the air. Add to all this, the clattering on deck and down below; the
tread of hurried feet; the loud hoarse shouts of seamen; the gurgling in
and out of water through the scuppers; with, every now and then, the
striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the deep, dead,
heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault; - and there is the
head-wind of that January morning.
I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of the ship:
such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the tumbling down of
stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose casks and truant dozens of
bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far from exhilarating
sounds raised in their various state-rooms by the seventy passengers
who were too ill to get up to breakfast. I say nothing of them: for
although I lay listening to this concert for three or four days, I don't
think I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the expiration of
which term, I lay down again, excessively sea-sick.
Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation of the term: I
wish I had been: but in a form which I have never seen or heard
described, though I have no doubt it is very common. I lay there, all the
day long, quite coolly and contentedly; with no sense of weariness,
with no desire to get up, or get better, or take the air; with no curiosity,
or care, or regret, of any sort or degree, saving that I think I can
remember, in this universal indifference, having a kind of lazy joy - of
fiendish delight, if anything so lethargic can be dignified with the title -
in the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to me. If I may be allowed to
illustrate my state of mind by such an example,