On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and
Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a
little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, sweet
smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you
begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning,
as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale,
waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it.
I remember my brother-in-law going for a short sea trip once, for the
benefit of his health. He took a return berth from London to Liverpool;
and when he got to Liverpool, the only thing he was anxious about was to
sell that return ticket.
It was offered round the town at a tremendous reduction, so I am told;
and was eventually sold for eighteenpence to a bilious-looking youth who
had just been advised by his medical men to go to the sea-side, and take
exercise.
"Sea-side!" said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket affectionately
into his hand; "why, you'll have enough to last you a lifetime; and as
for exercise! why, you'll get more exercise, sitting down on that ship,
than you would turning somersaults on dry land."
He himself - my brother-in-law - came back by train. He said the North-
Western Railway was healthy enough for him.
Another fellow I knew went for a week's voyage round the coast, and,
before they started, the steward came to him to ask whether he would pay
for each meal as he had it, or arrange beforehand for the whole series.
The steward recommended the latter course, as it would come so much
cheaper. He said they would do him for the whole week at two pounds
five. He said for breakfast there would be fish, followed by a grill.
Lunch was at one, and consisted of four courses. Dinner at six - soup,
fish, entree, joint, poultry, salad, sweets, cheese, and dessert. And a
light meat supper at ten.
My friend thought he would close on the two-pound-five job (he is a
hearty eater), and did so.
Lunch came just as they were off Sheerness. He didn't feel so hungry as
he thought he should, and so contented himself with a bit of boiled beef,
and some strawberries and cream. He pondered a good deal during the
afternoon, and at one time it seemed to him that he had been eating
nothing but boiled beef for weeks, and at other times it seemed that he
must have been living on strawberries and cream for years.
Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed happy, either -
seemed discontented like.
At six, they came and told him dinner was ready. The announcement
aroused no enthusiasm within him, but he felt that there was some of that
two-pound-five to be worked off, and he held on to ropes and things and
went down. A pleasant odour of onions and hot ham, mingled with fried
fish and greens, greeted him at the bottom of the ladder; and then the
steward came up with an oily smile, and said:
"What can I get you, sir?"
"Get me out of this," was the feeble reply.
And they ran him up quick, and propped him up, over to leeward, and left
him.
For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin
captain's biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain)
and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, and went in for
weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken
broth. He left the ship on Tuesday, and as it steamed away from the
landing-stage he gazed after it regretfully.
"There she goes," he said, "there she goes, with two pounds' worth of
food on board that belongs to me, and that I haven't had."
He said that if they had given him another day he thought he could have
put it straight.
So I set my face against the sea trip. Not, as I explained, upon my own
account. I was never queer. But I was afraid for George. George said
he should be all right, and would rather like it, but he would advise
Harris and me not to think of it, as he felt sure we should both be ill.
Harris said that, to himself, it was always a mystery how people managed
to get sick at sea - said he thought people must do it on purpose, from
affectation - said he had often wished to be, but had never been able.
Then he told us anecdotes of how he had gone across the Channel when it
was so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their berths, and he
and the captain were the only two living souls on board who were not ill.
Sometimes it was he and the second mate who were not ill; but it was
generally he and one other man. If not he and another man, then it was
he by himself.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you
come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them;
but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was
to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that
swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
