Well, about dark that evening, we got out where it was “rough.” The vessel began to roll, pitch, and plunge, and I heard the sea roaring, the waves splashing over the deck, a few loose articles on board rattling and tumbling about; and I began to wonder if everything about the vessel was secure. I sat on a sofa in the cabin, and presently, I began to feel—well, I felt, in a word, that a “voyage” was, like all other enjoyments, not quite what one anticipates; but still, well enough. Then, immediately, I felt a little—just a little—“worse.” I didn’t like the way the cabin was throwing itself around: it made my head feel queer. I thought that if the vessel would just stop rolling for half-a-minute, I would feel all right again. It didn’t stop, though, and I rapidly began to feel all wrong. In a word, I grew dizzy.
Dizzy? O, no! That’s no fair expression. I rather felt as though I was a large cask filled a little too full of mixed white lead, putty, or something heavy that way, and that the head was forced down upon it with considerable pressure—especially about the stomach, where I fancied one of the hoops of the imaginary cask might be located, and about the “brow,” where the upper hoop might be, did I experience this indescribable heaviness. I imagined the heavy cask (myself, John Smith,) to be rolling and tumbling about loose, and the white lead or putty straining to get out. I couldn’t stand that thought. The mate came into the cabin, asked me if I wasn’t sick, remarked that I looked “deathly pale,” and advised me to “turn in” as quickly as “the law would allow me.”
“Where?” I asked, as I rapidly grew sicker. “O, dear! Where’ll I sleep?”
“Here!” he said, hastily opening a stateroom door very near me. “Get in there. I’ll help you. Take the lower bunk. You will be the only passenger in this room.” In fact, there were but few passengers aboard.
As I attempted to rise, the ship gave a playful lurch, laid over on her side, then quickly tossed herself upon the other side, and if the mate had not caught me, I should have plunged clear across the cabin and tumbled back again, far more quickly than a man could have walked it. My crutch and cane escaped me, however, striking an opposite stateroom door in less than a second, and throwing themselves savagely about over the cabin floor.
