His cruel words of derision had hardly left his pale lips before they tacked again. He was not holding on, but he hastily snatched at the handles. He was too late, however, for he was tossed from the settee to the legs of the dining-room table (which, fortunately, were anchored) without touching the floor at all. He described a perfect parabola. It was just the way I should have tossed him had I been Destiny. He gripped the table-legs like a vise, coiling himself around them like a poor navy-blue python with a green face. He thought the worst was over, but in his last clutch at the locker he had accidentally opened it, and at the next lurch of the yacht all the cans bounded out and battered his unprotected back like a shower of grape-shot. The yacht lurched again and the cans rolled back. She pitched forward, and again the mushrooms and deviled ham aimed for him. The noise brought everybody, and at first nobody tried to help him. They just couldn’t see because of the tears in their eyes from laughing. As for me, I managed to crawl to the foot of the bed and cling to a post, so weak I couldn’t wipe the tears away, but laying up an amount of enjoyment which will enrich my old age.
Finally, Jimmie got sorry for him, and went and tried to pick him up. But he was laughing so, he dropped him.
“Oh, Jimmie,” I pleaded. “Don’t drop anybody who is seasick. Drop well people if you must. But put him on the settee carefully.”
“I’ll put him there,” said Jimmie, wiping his eyes on his coat-sleeve. “But I don’t say I’ll do it the first time I try. I’ll get him there by dinner-time—I hope.”
It was dangerous to ridicule anybody in that gale, for the doctor in the companion-way was leaning in at my window and laughing in his big English voice, when the Hela lurched and pitched him half-way into my state-room. There he balanced with his hands on my trunk.
He was rather a tight fit, which interested Jimmie more than young Bashforth, so he left the boy and came around and pried the doctor back into the companion-way.
The Hela was a fickle jade, for no sooner would she shake us up in such an alarming manner than she would seem to regret her violence, and would skim like a bird for an hour or so, with no perceptible motion. She would not even flap her big white wings, but she cut through the water with a whir and a rush which exhilarated me as flying must stir the heart of a sea-gull.
She behaved so well after five o’clock that they decided to try to eat dinner from the dinner-table—a thing they had not done since we started. There were only four of them able to appear—Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie, the doctor, and the Commodore.
They put the racks up and took every precaution. The only mistake they made was in using the yacht’s lovely china, which bore the Strossi crest under the Hela’s private flag.
Jimmie and his wife sat opposite each other. I put three pillows under my head, the better to watch them, when suddenly the yacht tilted Mrs. Jimmie and her chair over backward. Jimmie saw her going and reached to save her. But he forgot to set down his soup-plate. The result was that she got Jimmie’s soup in her face, and that he slid clear across the table on his hands and knees, taking china and table-cloth with him, and they all landed on top of poor Mrs. Jimmie (who, even as I write, is in her stateroom having her hair washed).