Here Morty succumbed to the malady of the ocean, groaning just as dismally as the Admiralty Agent. You may imagine corresponding sounds breaking out in neighboring cabins—indeed, for some hours the stuffy, crowded troop-deck had been littered with the bodies of those who had fallen victims to this insidious complaint.
And as the weather worsened, and hatchways, companions, and even scuttles were kept closed, that smell that Morty Jowell had said “Piff!” at—and that was reminiscent of the kilns at Little Milding, where fermenting hay was dried—mingled more potently in the hotch-potch of weird smells that distinguishes a troopship full of seasick soldiers.
It came in overpowering gusts from the fore-hold, that was close-packed with the Government forage-trusses. It came in blasts more overpowering still—being mingled with an appalling equine odor—through a square black hole in the lower deck—a yawning hole that had not been padded with sacks of straw like the corresponding aperture in the deck above it—when by means of canvas slings and tackle from the mainyard, the horses had been lowered into the after-hold.
Descending into the stifling blackness of this place, you presently made out by the significantly-haloed light of a couple of wire-guarded ship’s lanterns, rows of frightened hairy faces ranged along the sides of the hold, and looking at you across the spars that kept their owners—slung in canvas belts from hooks in the over-deck beams—in the stalls that were padded with straw and bundles of tow.
The central space between the rows of frightened hairy faces was packed to the upper-deck with more of Jowell’s forage-trusses. Dunnage was beneath the hoofs of these unlucky four-legged passengers, and layers of Cowell’s beef-barrels were underneath this. And when the ship rolled in stress of heavy weather, and the barrels shifted, the legs that got between them were frequently mashed to jelly, adding to the deadly qualms of nauseau torments more cruel still.
Sire my Friend accommodated the horses of his Cavalry, Artillery and Transport on the spar-decks of troop-ships—or at worst in the ’tween decks; sheltering them in the first instance beneath canvas, or housing them under temporary sheds of planks. But Britannia, at the instance of her evil genius Jowell, stowed—in nine cases out of ten—these luckless brutes upon the ballast.
Every day on board The British Queen—as on board those other transports speeding in the cause of Humanity to the East with men and horses—shots were heard far down in these submarine hells; and every night hairy bodies—sometimes dreadfully disfigured and distorted—were hauled up with rope-tackle and hove overboard. For your horse, whose anatomical structure renders it next to impossible to vomit, is capable of going mad; and does it under given circumstances, with conspicuous thoroughness. Therefore the faces of the men who went down into these places, looking pale or red as the case might be, came up again livid or purple; and the oaths they swore grew more sulphurous every day. For between good men and good horses there is love.
What time The British Queen was staggering, close-hauled, through the shattering yellow-green seas of the Bay of Biscay O! two hundred miles from England—and it blew a great gale through heavy squalls of rain—and the hatches were battened down, and every soul on the troop-decks, and every military officer in the poop cabin and several of the ship’s officers and crew, were dog-sick and helpless; even stout Blueberry nearly gave up hope of seeing the light of day again, and breathing something sweeter than the atmosphere of the after-hold.
For the comrade on his off-side was screaming in the convulsions of tetanus; and the mare on his near-side was dead like many another, with her long neck and helpless head banging him, flail-fashion, whenever the smelly, stifling stable you were pent up in stood on its front end—or swinging the other way and banging Corporal Geogehagan’s horse—and even the sailors who had come down at intervals to pump the tainted water from the tanks and serve out the musty hay had left off coming.