I want everybody to see
that I am not ill. It seems to me that I am wasting myself if I
don't let every human being in the vessel know that I am not ill. I
cannot sit still and be thankful, like you'd imagine a sensible man
would. I walk about the ship - smoking, of course - and look at
people who are not well with mild but pitying surprise, as if I
wondered what it was like and how they did it. It is very foolish
of me, I know, but I cannot help it. I suppose it is the human
nature that exists in even the best of us that makes us act like
this.
I could not get away from this man's cigar; or when I did, I came
within range of the perfume from the engine-room, and felt I wanted
to go back to the cigar. There seemed to be no neutral ground
between the two.
If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone
fore. It was much fresher there, and I should have been much
happier there altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-
class and then ride third - that was not business. No, I would stick
to the swagger part of the ship, and feel aristocratic and sick.
A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of
people - I could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was - came up
to me as I was leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and
asked me what I thought of the ship. He said she was a new boat,
and that this was her first voyage.
I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.
He replied: "Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night."
What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to lie down and go
to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that
position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she
could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me
she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished
speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had
very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at
getting out of the water altogether.
And this is what he called being a "bit skittish!"
Seafaring people talk like this, because they are silly, and do not
know any better. It is no use being angry with them.
I got a little sleep at last. Not in the bunk I had been at such
pains to secure:
