The _Wien_ got away from Syra about four in the afternoon, and put out into a very rough sea. The lady of our party went to bed immediately, her husband didn’t feel very well, and two others of the party were as cheerful as a pair of chickens that have been caught in a thunder shower. The fifth member of the crowd knew he wouldn’t be seasick, but had no appetite worth mentioning, and I was left alone in my glory, to pace the deck or go below, as I pleased.
I haven’t been seasick for a reasonable number of years, and didn’t want to begin again at that time and place. I have a suspicion that I take a malicious delight in showing how well I can be when others around me are covering the sea with maledictions, and furnishing pleasure and undigested food to the fishes that follow in the wake of the ship.
To give an illustration of the way I can stand the rolling of the “deep and dark blue ocean,” let me relate one incident.
Several years ago I went on board a steamer at Civita Vecchia, for Genoa. When we left Leghorn there were about sixty passengers, as happy as though they had just returned from a wedding or a circus. When we got out to sea we struck into a Mediterranean squall, such as sometimes blows the strings out of a pair of laced gaiters, or shaves the hair from the back of a bull dog. Those passengers went below to study the interior construction of the ship. Among them was an Englishman, who told me he had made four voyages to China, and hadn’t been seasick since he was a boy. I was the only passenger that didn’t go below, and I eat my dinner alone and with an appetite that would terrify the keeper of a boarding house. My English friend was much disordered about the stomach, and when we got to Genoa it was all he could do to get himself on shore. I took care of his wife and carried her down the gangway and up again on shore, and was as polite as I knew how, and it was entire disinterestedness on my part, as I had never met her before, and her husband was a big fellow who could fight if he wanted to, { 240}and, moreover, seasickness had given her a bedraggled appearance that was not calculated to incite love making to any alarming extent.
She looked as though somebody had run her through a patent clothes wringer and forgotten to shake her out afterwards.