My sufferings ought to have awakened his sympathy, but it did not in the least, and I found that nobody thought anything of a sea-sick passenger.
But at last I got over it, and, to my intense delight, all of a sudden Tom was smitten with the complaint, and became more prostrate than even I.
I did not forget the way he had tortured me, and you may be sure that I did not omit to ask him if he would try the brimstone and treacle. I behaved worse to him, I believe, for I tortured him by taking him cold fat pork and hard biscuits, and paid him various other little attentions of a kindred sort, making him groan with pain, till one day—it was while the sea was very rough, and I thought him too ill to move—he suddenly got up.
“Tell you what, Mas’r Harry,” he said, “I’m not going to stand your games no longer. I shall get up and be better;” and better he seemed to grow at once, so that by the next day he was almost himself again, and we stood by the high bulwarks watching the great Atlantic rollers as they came slowly on, as if to swallow up our ship.
Chapter Five.
A Sailor on Sea-Serpents.
“It do puzzle me, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom, as we sat in the chains one bright, sunny day, when the storm was over, but a fine stiff breeze was helping the toiling engines to send the steamer along at a splendid rate.
“What puzzles you, Tom?” I asked.