Meantime he would recommend that I get Lubly
to take the rest of my things off and then remain perfectly quiet.
He was right about it too.
Regardless of what one may think oneself, one is bound to accept
the statement of an authority on this subject; and if a steward
on a big liner, who has traveled back and forth across the ocean
for years, is not an authority on climate fever, who is? I looked
at it in that light. And sure enough, when we had passed out of
the Gulf Stream and the sea had smoothed itself out, I made a
speedy and satisfactory recovery; but if it had been seasickness
I should have confessed it in a minute. I have no patience with
those who quibble and equivocate in regard to their having been
seasick.
I had one relapse - a short one, but painful. In an incautious
moment, when I wist not wot I wotted, I accepted an invitation
from the chief engineer to go below. We went below - miles and
miles, I think - to where, standing on metal runways that were hot
to the foot, overalled Scots ministered to the heart and the lungs
and the bowels of that ship. Electricity spat cracklingly in our
faces, and at our sides steel shafts as big as the pillars of a
temple spun in coatings of spumy grease; and through the double
skin of her we could hear, over our heads, a mighty Niagaralike
churning as the slew-footed screws kicked us forward twenty-odd
knots an hour.
