AT SEA
In the British army, notwithstanding the phases and vicissitudes to which it is subjected, discipline still remains a paramount consideration—the keystone of its whole fabric. Come what may, the duty must be done. This is the great principle of action; and, in obedience to its law, young officers, who combine pleasure with military avocations, are continually on the move to and from head-quarters, by road, railway, or steam-boat—here to-day, gone to-morrow; proposing for themselves, indeed, many schemes of sport and pastime, but disposed of, morally and physically, by the regimental orders and the colonel's will.
Daisy, buried in Kildare, rising at day-break, going to bed at nine, looking sharply after the preparation of Satanella, could not avoid crossing the Channel for "muster," to re-cross it within twenty-four hours, that he might take part in the great race on which his fortunes now depended—to use his own expression, which was to "make him a man or a mouse."
Thus it fell out that he found himself embarking at Holyhead amongst a stream of passengers in the mid-day boat for Dublin, having caught the mail-train at Chester by a series of intricate combinations, and an implicit reliance on the veracity of Bradshaw. It rained a little, of course—it always does rain at Holyhead—and was blowing fresh from the south-west. The sea "danced," as the French say; ladies expressed a fear "it would be very rough;" their maids prepared for the worst; and a nautical-looking personage in a pea-coat with anchor buttons, who disappeared at once, to be seen no more till he landed, pale and dishevelled, in Kingstown harbour, opined first that "there was a capful of wind," secondly, that "it was a ten-knot breeze, and would hold till they made the land."
With loud throbs and pantings of her mighty heart, with a plunge, a hiss, a shower of heavy spray-drops, the magnificent steamer got under way, lurching and rolling but little, considering the weather, yet enough to render landsmen somewhat unsteady on their legs, and to exhibit the skill with which a curly-haired steward balanced himself, basin in hand, on his errands of benevolence and consolation.
Two ladies, who had travelled together in a through carriage from Euston Square, might have been seen to part company the moment they set foot on board. One of these established herself on deck, with a multiplicity of cushions, cloaks, and wrappings, to the manifest admiration of a raw youth in drab trowsers and highlows, smoking a damp cigar against the wind; while the other vanished into the ladies'-cabin, there to lay her head on a horse-hair pillow, to sigh, and moan, and shut her eyes, and long for land, perhaps to gulp, with watering mouth, short sips of brandy and water, perhaps to find the hateful mixture only made her worse.
What a situation for Blanche Douglas! How she loathed and despised the lassitude she could not fight against, the sufferings she could not keep down! How she envied Mrs. Lushington the open air, the sea-breeze, the leaping, following waves, her brightened eyes, her freshened cheeks, her keen enjoyment of a trip that according to different organisations, seems either a purgatory or a paradise! Could she have known how her livelier friend was engaged, she would have envied her even more.
That lady, like many other delicate, fragile women of fair complexion, was unassailable by sea-sickness, and never looked nor felt so well as when on board ship in a stiff breeze.