The first night out, from Genoa to Leghorn, was bad enough, but that
which succeeded our departure from the latter port was by far the
worst of the three we spent in our voyage to Naples. How we envied the
happy people who went ashore at Leghorn! I think we even envied the
bones of the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoese who met and slew each
other in the long-forgotten sea-fights, and sank too deeply through
the waves to be stirred by their restless tumult. Every one has
heard tell of how cross and treacherous a sea the Mediterranean is in
winter, and my own belief is, that he who has merely been sea-sick on
the Atlantic should give the Mediterranean a trial before professing
to have suffered every thing of which human nature is capable. Our
steamer was clean enough and staunch enough, but she was not large--no
bigger, I thought, than a gondola, that night as the waves tossed her
to and fro, till unwinged things took flight all through her cabins
and over her decks. My berth was placed transversely instead of
lengthwise with the boat,--an ingenious arrangement to heighten
sea-sick horrors, and dash the blood of the sufferer from brain to
boots with exaggerated violence at each roll of the boat; and I begged
the steward to let me sleep upon one of the lockers in the cabin.
I found many of my agonized species already laid out there; and the
misery of the three French commercial travellers was so great, that,
in the excess of my own dolor, it actually afforded me a kind of
happiness, and I found myself smiling at times to see the giant, with
the eyes of a choked ox, rise up and faintly bellow. Indeed, there was
something eldritch and unearthly in the whole business, and I think a
kind of delirium must have resulted from the sea-sickness. Otherwise,
I shall not know how to account for having attributed a kind of
consciousness and individuality to the guide-book of a young American
who had come aboard at Leghorn. He turned out afterward to be the
sweetest soul in the world, and I am sorry now that I regarded with
amusement his failure to smoke off his sickness. He was reading his
guide-book with great diligence and unconcern, when suddenly I marked
him lay it softly, softly down, with that excessive deliberation which
men use at such times, and vanish with great dignity from the
scene. Thus abandoned to its own devices, this guide-book began its
night-long riots, setting out upon a tour of the cabin with the first
lurch of the boat that threw it from the table upon the floor. I heard
it careen at once wildly to the cabin door, and knock to get out; and
failing in this, return more deliberately to the stern of the boat,
interrogating the tables and chairs, which had got their sea-legs on,
and asking them how they found themselves. Arrived again at the point
of starting, it seemed to pause a moment, and then I saw it setting
forth on a voyage of pleasure in the low company of a French hat,
which, being itself a French book, I suppose it liked. In these
travels they both ran under the feet of one of the stewards and were
replaced by an immense _tour de force_ on the table, from which the
book eloped again,--this time in company with an overcoat; but it
seemed the coat was too miserable to go far: it stretched itself at
full length on the floor, and suffered the book to dance over it, back
and forth, I know not how many times. At last, as the actions of
the book were becoming unendurable, and the general sea-sickness was
waxing into a frenzy, a heavy roll, that made the whole ship shriek
and tremble, threw us all from our lockers; and gathering myself up,
bruised and sore in every fibre, I lay down again and became sensible
of a blissful, blissful lull; the machinery had stopped, and with
the mute hope that we were all going to the bottom, I fell tranquilly
asleep.