From noon yesterday till noon to-day we have covered 316 nautical
miles, and are now a little more than half way across from Quebec to
Liverpool. The log reads at noon: Day, 7; lat., 30.06 N.; long.,
38.36; distance run, 316 miles. Remarks: Moderate winds, choppy sea.
The reader will please bear in mind that this is from a ship's log,
and that the "remarks" are to be understood in a strictly nautical
sense. These "moderate" winds of ours would pass on shore for
something between a very stiff breeze and a moderate gale. And as
for "choppy" seas, the Atlantic is not exactly a pond, though
sometimes irreverently described as such by the fellow who has never
crossed it, and this choppy sea makes our big ship reel and tumble
about like a man slightly more than "half seas over." There is a
deal of sickness in consequence. Some are unable to leave their
beds. Others manage to crawl on deck, but only to lie there in
chairs, silent and sullen, or mope about with a most woe-begone
appearance. Even your genial rover of the seas, who has been across
a score of times and assures you that he is not the least bit sick,
is not half so gay and talkative as he was yesterday and the day
before. You see there are degrees and stages of seasickness, and one
passes through a great variety of less or more painful experiences
before the last stage is reached. Over that final act of the
nautical drama (which to the heartless onlooker is too often comedy,
but to the chief actor, or rather sufferer, is in the last degree
tragic) we willingly let the curtain fall. Many drink sea-water,
glass after glass of it, and believe that it relieves them, or keeps
them from falling sick, as the case may be. I fancy I can hear some
one say as he reads this that the remedy is worse than the disease.
But I am quite sure that the one who says so has never been
seasick--perhaps never been to sea--in his life.
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