Idonia: A Romance of Old London

by Arthur Frederick Wallis

"Ha, Denis," said he coolly, "so thou art escaped. I had a notion 'twas thou wert crushed against the wall."

"You mistook then," said I, and might have said more, had not Captain Spurrier laid a hand upon my collar, the whiles he clapped his pistol to my uncle's ear, and called out—

"Lay me these men in irons, Attwood. I am master on my own good ship, if not in that fiends' compter."

We were seized upon instantly and hurried down to the hold, where, heavily shackled, we were thrown among such stuff as there lay stored. The vessel rolled horribly, and often drove against the impediments upon the bank with a dreadful grinding noise, but about morning, as I supposed, they got her about, and into the stream, where, the tempest somewhat abating, she rode pretty free, though what course she kept I could not be certain in, and indeed soon gave over the attempt to follow their purposes that had us so utterly in their power.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE VOYAGE OF THE SARACEN'S HEAD

Whatever the doubts I may at first have entertained, it was soon enough abundantly clear that the Saracen's Head was under way toward the open sea; for from my place in the hold I could hear the shipmen calling to one another as such and such a landmark or hamlet came into sight; as the green heights of Greenwich; and Tilbury, where there was a troop of horse at exercise, the which sight was occasion of a good deal of rough wit amongst the crew. At the mouth of the Medway we spoke a great merchant galley that was returned from Venice, and put in to Rochester for repairs, she having come by some damage in the late storm. Of the passage of time I soon lost count lying in the dark bottom of the ship, where was nought to denote those petty accidents by which we customarily reckon it. So I knew not positively whether 'twere day or night I waked and slept in nor whether we made good progress or slow. For awhile I tried to keep measure of the hours by our meals, as it might be three meals to an whole day; but this would not hold neither, for there was no regularity in the serving of them, they being brought us quite by haphazard and as they were thought on: which was seldom enough, and the food so stale and nauseating, as led me suppose we only received it by afterthought, or in such grudging contempt as is sometimes termed charity. To do him right, I must allow that my uncle took this reversal of his fortunes with a perfect indifference; as no doubt in the like situation my father would have done, though upon a loftier consideration; but however come by, his patience shamed me, who could by no means attain thereto, nor I think did seriously attempt it. My sufferings were indeed very great, and in that voyage I conceived such a passionate disgust of the sea as hath caused me to regard it as being (what in fact it is) the element the nearest to chaos, and therefore the least to be accounted for perfect—and yet perhaps not altogether the least, for I soon found myself doubting if a man's stomach were every way a sound device; it being very certain that mine often fell away into the original incoherence that all things had before the Creation, or ever I had gone three leagues from the shore.

No loathing can compare with that a man experienceth at such a time, when dinner is a greater insult than a blow. And I am ashamed even now to remember the hate I cherished for the honest mariner that stumbled down the companion bearing my platter of salt beef; which feeling found its vent in my imagining a world of tortures for the bearer of the beef and for all jovial ruddy mariners, and for every shipwright since the days of Noah.

Nevertheless, since into what state soever we come, we be so framed as by degrees to acquire a sort of habit, if not a content, therein, so it befell that I also, in due time, from my amazing and profound malady recovered some fragment of a willingness to live. It might have been the third or fourth day after, that I ate without such consequences as I had supposed necessarily incident to the act, and life came to assume an aspect wherein it stood on favourable terms with sudden death. This surprised me, seeing that of late I had conceived life to be (at the best) but a protracted and indefinite dissolution; and I ate again....