To Panama and back

by Henry T. Byford

There were not many at table, for most of those who had arisen early had already changed their mind. As I couldn’t conceive of anything worse than going back to my cabin, I lay down on the cushioned benches along the wall of the dining-room and gained some of the rest I had lost during the noisy night. We were going ahead again but only at the rate of seven knots an hour, were already nearly twenty-four hours behind our schedule time, and were likely to lose another twenty-four before reaching New Orleans. To try to go faster would have put us in danger of breaking the screw propeller, of losing our loose rudder and of cracking open at the part of our shell that had struck on the reef. In fact, we had been voyaging under conditions that according to natural laws and insurance statistics should have resulted in a wreck, and were content to be careful. Better two more days of comparative purgatory than to take up hastily and without preparation a longer residence in some more uncertain place.

CHAPTER V

The Didactics of Seasickness

Breaking the Sabbath—Giving up—Humiliation—Beef Tea Versus Coffee—A Disappointed Engineer—English without Grammar—The Lecture—Pathology—She-sickness—A Rebuke—Symptoms—A Homœopathic Cure—The Passive Treatment—A Reproach—Conclusions—A Suggestion and a Vote of Thanks.

During the first day of the “norther” both the ship and myself came through without any but threatened accidents, although neither of us was seaworthy. The next morning, however, my stomach broke the Sabbath and my pride had a fall. To arise early on Sunday is a bad habit; we are commanded to make Sunday a day of rest, I ought to have known better.

I arose in time for “coffee” and found the “norther” breaking the Sabbath, but did not take the hint. I stumbled out of bed and was precipitated across the stateroom, balancing and plunging from door to washstand and from bunk to trunk. I got one foot in my trousers and fell over, tried it again and sat down on the floor, holding on with my right hand while I pulled up my left suspender, and vice versa. Suddenly my stomach felt as if it were going to break, as the Germans say. I quickly ducked my head and allowed myself to be thrown into my bunk, and called up Christian Science, as I had successfully done the day before. But it was Sunday and she wouldn’t work. It would have been a feather in Doctor Brower’s hat to have caught me. But he probably was too busy himself to be out hunting for feathers. After a short rest I took some sherry, which is not a calendar saint, and it worked, for in half an hour I was able to finish my toilet and go to the dining-room and publicly drink a cupful of beef tea. The ship coffee did not tempt me, which was a point in its favor. Indeed, if all coffee were poor it would be better—it would have less opportunity to do harm in the world.

I lay around in the dining-room after a light breakfast and listened to instructive talks about yellow fever, leprosy, etc., but was particularly interested and enlightened by a non-professional Western gentleman who had gone to Panama in search of a job; one of those travelers who, like Walter Raleigh, had never eaten with a fork. He claimed to be an experienced engineer (whether civil or locomotive, he did not say) who had not been able to procure any kind of work there with a larger salary than thirty dollars a month, although Wallace was drawing much more than that. Hence he had kicked some of the mud off his feet and was on his way back to “God’s earth.” He could not praise De Lesseps and the French enough. The French employed white men and paid them like gentlemen.

But the most interesting part of his long and loud conversation was the illustration it afforded of how the English language can be used to express vividly and intelligibly all sorts of sentiments for hours at a stretch without conforming to a single rule of grammar. It was a most complete triumph of synesis over syntax, of eloquence over elegance. How he had learned to disregard the rules of grammar so unerringly was marvelous. The unequivocal force and fluent ferocity of his expressions afforded a striking compliment to our self-made language. Foreigners think that the English language has no grammar, and it was the mission of the engineer to prove that it could do without it. He expressed himself much more clearly and impressively than a large proportion of men do whose speech is all grammar. He said:

“Them French was cracker-jacks, and no joke. They wasn’t afeared to employ white men, nohow; and they knowed how to treat ’em. The Amerikins won’t employ nobody but niggers or such as works for niggers’ wages. They’ll never get the blamed banana canal digged no way. They ain’t nothin’ doin’, nor won’t be while them fellers is bossin’ the job, and it’s up to you and I to show ’em up. A man kin go down there and work until he pegs out, but he can’t get no pay fur it—only hell. The hull business ain’t got nuther head nor tail, it needs preorganization, and that’s what it ain’t got. As to Wallace, him and me ain’t old cronies, but we know each other, and that’s enough.” I concluded that he was a locomotive engineer, a loco as the Spanish would call him.

As it was Sunday and there was no ordained preacher aboard, and Doctor Senn wouldn’t preach, and Doctor Brower couldn’t preach while the wind blew, I delivered a medical lecture on seasickness, believing that the best way of benefiting them morally was by material instruction. I felt that I could speak from experience, and that there were those about me who could appreciate from experience. We could at least hold an experience meeting. I began: