How came I here, thought I? If this be the Royal Brunswicker they’ve shifted my berth, or have I blundered into another man’s bed! I lifted my head to look over the edge of the hammock, for the canvas walls came somewhat high, the bolster was small and my head lay low, and I was startled to find that I had not the power to straighten my spine into an upright posture. Thrice did I essay to sit up and thrice did I fail, but by putting my hand on the edge of the hammock and incurving the flexible canvas to about the level of my nose, I contrived to obtain a view of the interior in which I swung; and found it to consist of a little berth or cabin, the walls and bulkheads of a gloomy snuff color, lighted by a small scuttle or circular port-hole of the diameter of a saucer, filled with a heavy block of glass, which, as I watched it, darkened into a deep green, then flashed out into snowy whiteness, then darkened again, and so on with regular alternations: and by this I guessed that I was not only on board a ship, but that the ship I was on board of was rolling heavily and plunging sharply, and rushing through the seas as though driving before a whole gale of wind.
There was no snuff-colored cabin, with a scuttle of the diameter of a saucer, to be found on board the Royal Brunswicker; this ship therefore could not be the vessel that I was mate of. I was hugely puzzled, and my wits whirred in my brain like the works of a watch when the spring breaks, and I continued to peer over the edge of the hammock that I held pressed down, vainly seeking enlightenment in a plain black locker that stood under the scuttle and in what I must call a washstand in the corner of the berth facing the door, and in a small lamp, resembling a cheap tin coffee-pot, standing upon a metal bracket nailed to the bulkhead.
As nothing came to me out of these things I let go the edge of the hammock and gazed at the beam again overhead, and sunk my sensations into the motions of the ship, insomuch that I could feel every roll and toss of her, every dive, pause, and staggering rush forward as though it were a pulse, and I said to myself, “It blows hard, and a tall sea is running, and I am on board a smaller ship than the Royal Brunswicker, and our speed cannot be less than twelve knots an hour through the water.”
I now grew conscious that I was hungry and thirsty, and as thirst is pain even in its very earliest promptings—unlike hunger, which when first felt is by no means a disagreeable sensation—I endeavored to sit up, intending in that posture to call out, but found myself, as before, helpless. Then I thought I would call out without sitting up, and I opened my mouth, but my lungs would deliver nothing better than a most ridiculous groan. However, after some ten minutes had passed, the top of a man’s head showed over the rim of the hammock. The sight of his eyes and his large cap of fur or hair startled me; I had not heard him enter.
“Have you your consciousness?” said he.
I answered “Yes.”
“I am no doctor,” said he, “and don’t know what I am to do now that your senses have come to you.”
“I should like something to drink,” said I.
“You shall have it,” he answered, “give the drink a name? Brandy-and-water?”
“Anything,” I exclaimed. “I am very thirsty.”