They had to wear ship again, always a ticklish manoeuvre in weather like this.
A tremendous sea struck her quarter, stove in the very port abreast of which the little lord was lying, and washed him clean out of bed into the lee scuppers, and set all swimming around him.
Didn't he yell, and wash about the cabin, and grab at all the chairs and tables and things that drifted about, nimble as eels, avoiding his grasp!
In rushed the captain, and in staggered Staines. They stopped his “voyage autour de sa chambre,” and dragged him into the after saloon.
He clung to them by turns, and begged, with many tears, to be put on the nearest land; a rock would do.
“Much obliged,” said the captain; “now is the very time to give rocks a wide berth.”
“A dead whale, then—a lighthouse—anything but a beast of a ship.”
They pacified him with a little brandy, and for the next twenty-four hours he scarcely opened his mouth, except for a purpose it is needless to dwell on. We can trust to our terrestrial readers' personal reminiscences of lee-lurches, weather-rolls, and their faithful concomitant.
At last they wriggled out of the Channel, and soon after that the wind abated, and next day veered round to the northward, and the ship sailed almost on an even keel. The motion became as heavenly as it had been diabolical, and the passengers came on deck.
Staines had suffered one whole day from sea-sickness, but never complained. I believe it did his mind more good than harm.