He perceived this too, and knuckling his forehead said, "It's but a little of the sea ye shall have, miss, if so be it lies in my power to keep this here Spitfire awalking," and so speaking he moved off, singing out some idle order as he did so by way of excusing his abrupt departure.
"I wish we were quite alone, Herbert," said my sweetheart, drawing me to the yacht's rail.
"So do I, my own, but not here—not in the middle of the sea."
"I did not think of bringing a veil—your men stare so."
"And so do I," said I, letting my gaze sink fair into her eyes, which she had upturned to mine. "You wouldn't have me rebuke the poor, harmless, sailor men for doing what I am every instant guilty of—admiring you, I mean, to the very topmost height of my capacity in that way—but here comes Master Bobby Allett with the breakfast."
"Herbert, I could not eat for worlds."
"Are you so much in love as all that?"
She shook her head, and looked at the flowing lines of green water which melted into snow, as they came curving, with glass-clear backs, to the ruddy streak of the yacht's sheathing. However, the desire to keep her at sea until we could land ourselves close to the spot where we were to be married made me too anxious to conquer the uneasiness which the motion of the vessel excited to humour her. I coaxed and implored, and eventually got her below, and by dint of talking and engaging her attention, and making her forget herself, so to speak, I managed to betray her into breaking her fast with a cup of tea and a fragment of cold chicken. This was an accomplishment of which I had some reason to feel proud; but then, to be sure, I was in the secret, knowing this; that sea nausea is entirely an affair of the nerves; that no sufferer is ill in his sleep, no matter how high the sea may be running, or how unendurable to his waking senses the sky-high capers and abysmal plunges of the craft may be, and that the correct treatment for sea-sickness is—not to think of it. In short, I made my sweetheart forget to feel uneasy. She talked, she sipped her tea, she ate, and then she looked better, and indeed owned that she felt so.