Border and Bastille | Page 4

told me that throughout the fearful weather to which the Niagara and Agamemnon were exposed, on their first attempt to lay down the cable, he never once felt a sensation of nausea; the body had not time to suffer till the mind was relieved from its heavy, anxious strain.
For three days after leaving Queenstown, the west winds met us, steady and strong; but it was not till the afternoon of Christmas day that the sea began to "get up" in earnest, and the weather to portend a gale. Then, the Atlantic seemed determined to prove that report had not exaggerated the hardships of a winter passage. It blew harder and harder all Friday, and after a brief lull on Saturday--as though gathering breath for the final onset--the storm fairly reached its height, and then slowly abated, leaving us substantial tokens of its visit in the shape of shattered boats, and the ruin of all our port bulwarks forward of the deck-house. I fancy there was nothing extraordinary in the tempest; and, in a stout ship, with plenty of sea room, there is probably little real danger; but about the intense discomfort there could be no question. I speak with no undue bitterness, for of nausea, in any shape, I know of little or nothing, but--oh, mine enemy!--if I could feel certain you were well out in the Atlantic, experiencing, for just one week, the weather that fell to our lot, I would abate much of my animosity, purely from satiation of revenge.
Unless absolutely prostrated by illness, the voyager, of course, has a ravenous appetite; such being the case, what can be more exasperating than having to grapple with a sort of dioramic dinner, where the dishes represent a series of dissolving views--mutton and beef of mature age, leaping about with a playfulness only becoming living lambs and calves--while the proverb of "cup and lip" becomes a truism from perpetual illustration? Neither is it agreeable, after falling into an uncertain doze, to feel dampness mingling strangely with your dreams, and to awake to find yourself, as it were, an island in a little salt lake formed by distillation through invisible crevices.
"Oh, laith, laith were our gude Scot lords To wet their cork-heeled shoon,"
says the grand old ballad; so, I suppose, it is nothing "unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman" to hold such midnight irrigation in utter abhorrence.
On one of these occasions I abandoned a post no longer tenable, and went into the small saloon close by, to seek a dry spot whereon to finish the night, I found it occupied by a ghastly man, with long, wild gray hair, and a white face--striding staggeringly up and down--moaning to himself in a harsh, hollow voice, "No rest; I can't rest." He never spoke any other words, and never ceased repeating these, while I remained to hear him. Instantly there came back to my memory a horrible German tale, read and forgotten fifteen years ago, of a certain old and unjust steward, Daniel by name, who, having murdered his master by casting him down an oubliettes, ever haunted the fatal tower, first as a sleep-walker, then as a restless ghost--moaning and gibbering to himself, and tearing at a walled-up door with bleeding hands. The train of thought thereby suggested was so very sombre, that I preferred returning to my cabin, and climbing into an unfurnished berth, to spending more minutes in that weird company. I never made the man out satisfactorily afterwards. It is possible that he was one of the few who scarcely showed on deck, till we were in sight of land; but rather, I believe, like other visions and voices of the night, he changed past recognition under the garish light of day.
Then come the noisy nuisances, extending through all the diapason of sound. One--the most annoying--to which the ear never becomes callous by use, is the incessant crash, not only alongside, but overhead. At intervals--more frequent, of course, after our bulwarks were swept away--the green water came tumbling on board by tons; and, being unable to escape quickly enough by the after-scuppers, surged backwards and forwards with every roll of the vessel, as if it meant to keep you down and bury you forever. Lying in my berth, I could feel the heavy seas smite the strong ship one cruel blow after another on her bows or beam, till at last she would seem to stop altogether, and, dropping her head, like a glutton in the P. R., would take her punishment sullenly, without an effort at rising or resistance. Nevertheless, I stand by "The Asia," as a right good boat for rough weather, though she is not a flyer, and sometimes could hardly do more than hold her own. Eighty-one knots in the twenty-four hours