Border and Bastille | Page 4

thirtieth transit within five years. He was certainly entitled to
the freedom of the ocean, if intimate acquaintance with every fathom of
its depth and breadth could establish a claim. It rather surprised me,
afterwards, to see such science and experience yield so easily to the
common weakness of seafaring humanity. Mr. Field 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