Around the World in Seventy-Two Days | Page 6

an amused gleam of a steward's eye, which made me
bury my face in my handkerchief and choke before I reached the limits
of the dining hall.
The bravos with which they kindly greeted my third return to the table
almost threatened to make me lose my bearings again. I was glad to
know that dinner was just finished and I had the boldness to say that it
was very good!
I went to bed shortly afterwards. No one had made any friends yet, so I
concluded sleep would be more enjoyable than sitting in the music hall
looking at other passengers engaged in the same first-day-at-sea
occupation.
I went to bed shortly after seven o'clock. I had a dim recollection
afterwards of waking up enough to drink some tea, but beyond this and
the remembrance of some dreadful dreams, I knew nothing until I heard
an honest, jolly voice at the door calling to me.
Opening my eyes I found the stewardess and a lady passenger in my
cabin and saw the Captain standing at the door.
"We were afraid that you were dead," the Captain said when he saw
that I was awake.
"I always sleep late in the morning," I said apologetically.
"In the morning!" the Captain exclaimed, with a laugh, which was
echoed by the others, "It is half-past four in the evening!"
"But never mind," he added consolingly, "as long as you slept well it
will do you good. Now get up and see if you can't eat a big dinner."
I did. I went through every course at dinner without flinching, and
stranger still, I slept that night as well as people are commonly
supposed to sleep after long exercise in the open air.
The weather was very bad, and the sea was rough, but I enjoyed it. My

sea-sickness had disappeared, but I had a morbid, haunting idea, that
although it was gone, it would come again, still I managed to make
myself comfortable.
Almost all of the passengers avoided the dining-room, took their meals
on deck and maintained reclining positions with a persistency that grew
monotonous. One bright, clever, American-born girl was traveling
alone to Germany, to her parents. She entered heartily into anything
that was conducive to pleasure. She was a girl who talked a great deal
and she always said something. I have rarely, if ever, met her equal. In
German as well as English, she could ably discuss anything from
fashions to politics. Her father and her uncle are men well-known in
public affairs, and by this girl's conversation it was easy to see that she
was a father's favorite child; she was so broad and brilliant and
womanly. There was not one man on board who knew more about
politics, art, literature or music, than this girl with Marguerite hair, and
yet there was not one of us more ready and willing to take a race on
deck than was she.
I think it is only natural for travelers to take an innocent pleasure in
studying the peculiarities of their fellow companions. We were not out
many days until everybody that was able to be about had added a little
to their knowledge of those that were not. I will not say that the
knowledge acquired in that way is of any benefit, nor would I try to say
that those passengers who mingled together did not find one another as
interesting and as fit subjects for comment. Nevertheless it was
harmless and it afforded us some amusement.
I remember when I was told that we had among the passengers one man
who counted his pulse after every meal, and they were hearty meals,
too, for he was free from the disease of the wave, that I waited quite
eagerly to have him pointed out, so that I might watch him. If it had
been my pulse, instead of his own, that he watched so carefully, I could
not have been more interested thereafter. Every day I became more
anxious and concerned until I could hardly refrain from asking him if
his pulse decreased before meals and increased afterwards, or if it was
the same in the evening as it was in the morning.

I almost forgot my interest in this one man, when my attention was
called to another, who counted the number of steps he took every day.
This one in turn became less interesting when I found that one of the
women, who had been a great sufferer from sea-sickness, had not
undressed since she left her home in New York.
"I am sure we are all going down," she said one day in a burst of
confidence, "and I am determined to go down dressed!"
I was not surprised after this that she was so dreadfully