HOW THE SHIP ROLLS AND LURCHES!
Of course we have an opera-singer on board—a lady with a figure like the profile of a disc record. No home on the rolling deep can be complete without one. You feel as if you really knew her personally, having heard her voice so often upon your coffee-mill at home. And of course we have an actor or an actress with us. A liner might as well attempt to go to sea without a rudder as without one.
Also, if we are to have full measure, there must be on board a playwright or a novelist, a scientific man, an absconder, a bishop, a transatlantic sharper; a group of nasal people "personally conducted" by a man with a sad, patient face; a lord, or at the very least, a baron and some counts. The other passengers are, for the most part, colourless and quiet people like ourselves.
The men upon a liner are divided into two broad classes: the deck crowd and the smoke-room crowd. I can not tell you much about the former, as I see them only now and then at meals; but the smoke-room is always full of pleasant chaps. You see, the smoke-room on an English liner is made (like English law) for men only, and, being made for men, it is the most comfortable place upon the ship. It is my habit to make for the smoke-room as soon as I decently can (or even sooner), there to lie upon a leather couch, feet up, back propped against a cushion, and smoke, or doze, or read, or talk, or think about the endlessness of transatlantic trips. Only two things can drive me from the smoke-room: one is the smoke-room steward, who closes up at night; the other is my own sense of shipboard duty toward family or friends. Occasionally one has to go and see how they are faring.
How the ship rolls and lurches the moment that one rises from the leather couch! How cold and damp and windy is the deck, how desolate the ladies' cabin when one comes from the snugness of the smoke-room! Upon a narrow seat just inside the cabin door, an indelicate old person lies, eyes closed and jaws agape. Across the room, a book turned downward in her lap, sits the forlorn object of your fond solicitude. Her eyes are gazing straight ahead, at nothing.
"Ah, dear," you say, approaching with the best show of gaiety that you can muster, "here you are, eh? I thought I'd come and see if you wanted me."
"Oh, no."
"Did that canned pineapple disagree with you? I'm glad I didn't touch it. Well, then, I'll run in and see them auction off the pool. You won't mind? By-by, dear."
You think that you want air. Reeling to the wind swept deck, you cling unsteadily to an iron post at the fore part of the ship. Your cap goes flying overboard, carried, like an aeroplane, upon the gale; your cigar is blown to shreds; you feel the sting of cold salt spray upon your face; your eyeballs rock with the great bow of the ship, which rears itself in air, higher, higher, higher, then smashes down upon the sea, throwing green, hissing mountains off to either side, only to rear and smash again a million times.