But sad indeed to see that Ocean,
From east to west, in wild commotion.”
Though I did not suffer from sea-sickness, I did not escape considerable annoyance and discomfort. Anybody who knows me can testify that I am not a dwarf, that I stand over six feet, and have a proportionate breadth of beam. My berth was about an inch shorter than its occupant, and when I tried to lie flat on my back I took up all the width of it. I couldn’t straighten out, because the berth was too short; I couldn’t lie on my side through fear of being rocked out; and I couldn’t lie face down, for the same reason that I couldn’t lie face up. Taken for all in all, the room was the most uncomfortable I ever slept in on board ship. When I went into my “little bed,” I felt as though I was in a second-hand coffin, originally made for a smaller man, and I dreamed of this state of things so often that I considered the night had gone wrong without such a slumbering fancy. The rolling of the ship made it awkward to put on my clothes and perform other toilet duties; and if I went through preparations for breakfast without a tumble or two, I considered myself lucky.
One morning the steward brought me a lemon. It is a very good practice at sea to swallow the juice of a lemon half an hour before breakfast, in order to clear the stomach and remove any tendencies to biliousness. He put the lemon on my sofa, and I crawled out of bed just as he retreated and closed the door.
Well; the ship made a lurch and sent me head foremost upon the sofa, as though I had been shot from a mortar. With some difficulty I picked myself up, and braced long enough to get a tumbler and make ready to squeeze the lemon. Just as I reached for it the ship went the other way, and the lemon rolled from the sofa and under the berth. I went on hands and knees in a humble attitude to reach for it; over went the ship just as I extended my arm under the berth; my body followed my arm, and my legs followed my body, and it was no easy matter to get up again. While I was getting to rights, the old craft lurched the other way, and my lemon shot across the floor like a rat pursued by a terrier, and took up a hiding-place again under the sofa.
Then I went for it with the same result as before. Just as I put my hand upon it there was a movement in the lemon-market, and the article I was pursuing traversed the floor and sought the farthest corner under the berth once more.
About five minutes we kept up that circus; sometimes I was ahead, and sometimes the lemon, and both were pretty well exhausted by the time the race was over.
