O, how I wished the ship would stop rolling for just a moment! But it wouldn’t stop at all. It rolled, and plunged, and tossed, and tumbled, and pitched; and I got sicker, and sicker, and sicker, till I imagined myself at “death’s door,” with my hand on the bell-handle.
To gain a slight conception as to how I felt, fancy how a boy would feel, if, when sick on his first cigar, he were not allowed to throw it away, but forced to retain it in his mouth and smoke away! Thus it is with one who is sea-sick. The motion of the vessel causes it, and when a fellow grows dizzy, and feels wretched about the bottom of the vest, he can’t throw that motion away, like a cigar. It has made him sick, it makes him sicker, and don’t even stop when he gets “deathly sick.” To treat a patient scientifically, physicians remove the cause of his illness; but in this case, the cause—that is, the motion of the vessel—cannot be removed, and there is nothing left for the unhappy patient but to get “used to it.”
The only thing I remember of that fearful night, except pure, unbroken, unalloyed misery, is that I asked the captain, as he passed through the cabin, if it was actually storming. He carelessly replied:
“O, it’s only blowing a fresh little nor’-wester;” and passed on.
A fresh little nor’-wester! I groaned in agony, and rolled about in my berth, thinking that if that was only a fresh little nor’-wester, what a fearful thing a stale big nor’-wester would be!
Next morning at daylight the steward came to my berth and asked me if I could “eat something?” Eat! Whew? Ugh! The very thought came near bringing on a relapse. “No, no, no!” I shuddered; and buried my face in my bunk.
About ten o’clock he passed through the cabin, and I asked him if we were “out of sight o’ land?”
“Out o’ sight?” he returned. “Yes, and have been for ten hours!”
I felt somewhat better—in fact, a good deal better than during the terrible night just passed—and I determined to make my way to the deck to view a scene that had never before blessed my eyes. The wind had abated, but the waves ran high, and the vessel was still rolling considerably. Feeling light-headed and queer, I got out of my berth, grasping something all the time to keep from being spilled out into the cabin, got my crutch, left my state-room, and began to move toward the companion-way. By hugging the wall, grasping state-room door-knobs, and the like, I reached the foot of the staircase without falling, and looking up—the hatch being open—I saw the blue sky staggering about overhead. Holding firmly to a polished brass railing, I ascended to the deck and took a seat on the companion-hatch.
Before me and all around me was the long wished-for sight. Our ship, the dark-green sea, the sun, the clear blue sky and a few wild sea-birds flitting about, were all that the eye could find to rest on. The sea and sky met on all sides, forming a grand and mighty circle around us. I remember remarking to myself, in my enthusiasm, that to see such a sight as this, was “worth risking a fellow’s life!”