The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night I shall never forget. 'Will it
ever be worse than this?' was a question I had often heard asked, when everything was
sliding and bumping about, and when it certainly did seem difficult to comprehend the
possibility of anything afloat being more disturbed, without toppling over and going down.
But what the agitation of a steam− vessel is, on a bad winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is
impossible for the most vivid imagination to conceive. To say that she is flung down on her
side in the waves, with her masts dipping into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls
over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of a hundred great guns,
and hurls her back − that she stops, and staggers, and shivers, as though stunned, and then,
with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like a monster goaded into madness, to be
beaten down, and battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry sea − that thunder,
lightning, hail, and rain, and wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery − that every
plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in the great ocean its
howling voice − is nothing. To say that all is grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last
degree, is nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream can
call it up again, in all its fury, rage, and passion.
And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in a situation so exquisitely
ridiculous, that even then I had as strong a sense of its absurdity as I have now, and could no
more help laughing than I can at any other comical incident, happening under circumstances
the most favourable to its enjoyment. About midnight we shipped a sea, which forced its
way through the skylights, burst open the doors above, and came raging and roaring down
into the ladies' cabin, to the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little Scotch lady −
who, by the way, had previously sent a message to the captain by the stewardess, requesting
him, with her compliments, to have a steel conductor immediately attached to the top of
every mast, and to the chimney, in order that the ship might not be struck by lightning. They
and the handmaid before mentioned, being in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew
what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative or comfortable
cordial; and nothing better occurring to me, at the moment, than hot brandy−and−water, I
procured a tumbler full without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without holding on,
they were all heaped together in one corner of a long sofa − a fixture extending entirely
across the cabin − where they clung to each other in momentary expectation of being
drowned. When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to administer it
with many consolatory expressions to the nearest sufferer, what was my dismay to see them
all roll slowly down to the other end! And when I staggered to that end, and held out the
glass once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by the ship giving
another lurch, and their all rolling back again! I suppose I dodged them up and down this
sofa for at least a quarter of an hour, without reaching them once; and by the time I did catch
them, the brandy−and−water was diminished, by constant spilling, to a teaspoonful. To
complete the group, it is necessary to recognise in this disconcerted dodger, an individual
very pale from sea− sickness, who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair, last, at
Liverpool: and whose only article of dress (linen not included) were a pair of dreadnought
trousers; a blue jacket, formerly admired upon the Thames at Richmond; no stockings; and
American Notes
CHAPTER Ii − THE Passage OUT 15