“I wish you’d show me how you do it, sir, for I get on awfully, and I’m that sore that I’m beginning to shudder.”
“It’s a matter of use, Sam. Try and sit a little more upright, like this.”
“Like that, sir?” said the man, excitedly. “No, thankye, sir. It’s bad enough like this. I suppose I must grin and bear it. Here, I’ve tried straightforward striddling like one would on a donkey, but this beast don’t seem to have no shape in him. Then I’ve tried like a lady, sitting left-handed with my legs, and then after I’ve got tired that way for a bit, and it don’t work comfortable, I’ve tried right-handed with my legs. But it’s no good. Bit ago I saw one of these niggers shut his legs up like a pocket foot-rule, and I says to myself, ‘That’s the way, then;’ so I began to pull my legs up criss-cross like a Turk in a picture.”
“Well, did that do?” said Frank, listening to the man, for the remarks kept away his own troubled thoughts.
“Nearly did for me, sir. I had to claw hold like a kitten to the top of a basket of clothes, or I should have been down in the sand, with this wicked-looking brute dancing a hornpipe in stilts all over me. Ugh, you beast! don’t do that.”
“What’s the matter?” said Frank, as the man shuddered and exclaimed at the animal he rode.
“Oh, I do wish he wouldn’t, sir. It’s just as if he don’t like me, and does it on purpose.”
“Does what?”
“Turns his head and neck round to look at me, just like a big giant goose, and he opens and shuts his mouth, and leers and winks at me, sir. It gives me quite a turn. It’s bad enough when he goes on steady, but when he does that I feel just as I did when we crossed the Channel, and as if I must go below. I say, sir, can a man be sea-sick with riding on a camel?”
“I don’t know about sea-sick, Sam,” said Frank, laughing outright, “but I really did feel very uncomfortable at first. The motion is so peculiar.”