I assured the Judge that some of the passengers might have been lying to him, and that the ocean was very much slandered. Next day it came on to blow, and by midnight we were tossing as if a lot of giants had put the ship in a blanket and were having some first-class fun. She rocked and pitched magnificently, and a liberal portion of the passengers were laid out with mal-du-mer.
And the Judge! I paid him a visit when the storm was at its worst, and his condition was such as to rouse in my breast mingled sentiments of pleasure and sorrow. He was lying on the sofa, and his right hand convulsively clutched a basin into which he was pouring the contents of his stomach.
"What a fool a man is to come to sea,” he gasped in the intervals of his wretchedness. “I was an idiot not to have gone travelling in Pennsylvania, instead of coming out here. I would give a thousand dollars to be safe back in New York.”
I endeavored to console him, but he would not be comforted. While I poured soothing words into his ear, and brandy down his throat, the ship gave an extra lurch that brought a fresh discharge from the Judge’s mouth. Something dark and solid fell into the basin, and as the Judge contemplated it, his face assumed an expression of horror.
“I will be hanged,” said he, “if I have not thrown up a piece of my liver; just look at it; everything inside of me will be up next. In fifteen minutes you can look for my toe-nails.”
He sank back fainting, but brightened up a little when I told him that what he supposed to be his liver was nothing more than a piece of corned beef which he swallowed at dinner and his stomach had failed to digest.
He grew better next day, but persisted in declaring the ocean a humbug, and said that when he once got back, nothing should tempt him to come abroad again.