He did not look as if he enjoyed it. I believe he
smoked it merely to show how well he was feeling, and to irritate
people who were not feeling very well.
There is something very blatantly offensive about the man who feels
well on board a boat.
I am very objectionable myself, I know, when I am feeling all right.
It is not enough for me that I am not ill. 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: I would not have stopped down in that stuffy
saloon, if anybody had offered me a hundred pounds for doing so.
Not that anybody did; nor that anybody seemed to want me there at
all. I gathered this from the fact that the first thing that met my
eye, after I had succeeded in clawing my way down, was a boot. The
air was full of boots. There were sixty men sleeping there - or, as
regards the majority, I should say TRYING to sleep there - some in
bunks, some on tables, and some under tables. One man WAS asleep,
and was snoring like a hippopotamus - like a hippopotamus that had
caught a cold, and was hoarse; and the other fifty-nine were sitting
up, throwing their boots at him. It was a snore, very difficult to
locate. From which particular berth, in that dimly-lighted, evil-
smelling place, it proceeded nobody was quite sure. At one moment,
it appeared to come, wailing and sobbing, from the larboard, and the
next instant it thundered forth, seemingly from the starboard. So
every man who could reach a boot picked it up, and threw it
promiscuously, silently praying to Providence, as he did so, to
guide it aright and bring it safe to its desired haven.
I watched the weird scene for a minute or two, and then I hauled
myself on deck again, and sat down - and went to sleep on a coil of
rope; and was awakened, in the course of time, by a sailor who
wanted that coil of rope to throw at the head of a man who was
standing, doing no harm to anybody, on the quay at Ostend.
SATURDAY, 24TH
Arrival at Ostend. - Coffee and Rolls. - Difficulty of Making French
Waiters understand German. - Advantages of Possessing a Conscience
That Does Not Get Up Too Early. - Villainy Triumphant. - Virtue
Ordered Outside. - A Homely English Row.
When I say I was "awakened" at Ostend, I do not speak the strict
truth. I was not awakened - not properly. I was only half-awakened.
I never did get fairly awake until the afternoon. During the
journey from Ostend to Cologne I was three-parts asleep and one-part
partially awake.
At Ostend, however, I was sufficiently aroused to grasp the idea
that we had got somewhere, and that I must find my luggage and B.,
and do something or other; in addition to which, a strange, vague
instinct, but one which I have never yet known deceive me, hovering
about my mind, and telling me that I was in the neighbourhood of
something to eat and drink, spurred me to vigour and action.
