Three Men in a Boat | Page 6

to go to the sea-side,

and take exercise.
"Sea-side!" said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket affectionately
into his hand; "why, you'll have enough to last you a lifetime; and as
for exercise! why, you'll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship,
than you would turning somersaults on dry land."
He himself - my brother-in-law - came back by train. He said the
North- Western Railway was healthy enough for him.
Another fellow I knew went for a week's voyage round the coast, and,
before they started, the steward came to him to ask whether he would
pay for each meal as he had it, or arrange beforehand for the whole
series.
The steward recommended the latter course, as it would come so much
cheaper. He said they would do him for the whole week at two pounds
five. He said for breakfast there would be fish, followed by a grill.
Lunch was at one, and consisted of four courses. Dinner at six - soup,
fish, entree, joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, and dessert. And a
light meat supper at ten.
My friend thought he would close on the two-pound-five job (he is a
hearty eater), and did so.
Lunch came just as they were off Sheerness. He didn't feel so hungry as
he thought he should, and so contented himself with a bit of boiled beef,
and some strawberries and cream. He pondered a good deal during the
afternoon, and at one time it seemed to him that he had been eating
nothing but boiled beef for weeks, and at other times it seemed that he
must have been living on strawberries and cream for years.
Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed happy, either -
seemed discontented like.
At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. The announcement
aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was some of
that two-pound-five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and

things and went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot ham,
mingled with fried fish and greens, greeted him at the bottom of the
ladder; and then the steward came up with an oily smile, and said:
"What can I get you, sir?"
"Get me out of this," was the feeble reply.
And they ran him up quick, and propped him up, over to leeward, and
left him.
For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin
captain's biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain)
and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, and went in for
weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on
chicken broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away
from the landing-stage he gazed after it regretfully.
"There she goes," he said, "there she goes, with two pounds' worth of
food on board that belongs to me, and that I haven't had."
He said that if they had given him another day he thought he could
have put it straight.
So I set my face against the sea trip. Not, as I explained, upon my own
account. I was never queer. But I was afraid for George. George said he
should be all right, and would rather like it, but he would advise Harris
and me not to think of it, as he felt sure we should both be ill. Harris
said that, to himself, it was always a mystery how people managed to
get sick at sea - said he thought people must do it on purpose, from
affectation - said he had often wished to be, but had never been able.
Then he told us anecdotes of how he had gone across the Channel when
it was so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their berths, and
he and the captain were the only two living souls on board who were
not ill. Sometimes it was he and the second mate who were not ill; but
it was generally he and one other man. If not he and another man, then
it was he by himself.

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you
come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of
them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all
what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad
sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land
is a mystery.
If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat one day, I
could account for the seeming enigma easily enough. It was just off
Southend Pier, I recollect, and he was leaning