advance an inch.  Imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and 
artery of her huge body swollen and bursting under this 
maltreatment, sworn to go on or die.  Imagine the wind howling, the 
sea roaring, the rain beating:  all in furious array against her.  
Picture the sky both dark and wild, and the clouds, in fearful 
sympathy with the waves, making another ocean in the air.  Add to 
all this, the clattering on deck and down below; the tread of 
hurried feet; the loud hoarse shouts of seamen; the gurgling in and 
out of water through the scuppers; with, every now and then, the 
striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the deep, dead, 
heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault; - and there is the 
head-wind of that January morning.

I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of the 
ship:  such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the tumbling 
down of stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose casks and truant 
dozens of bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far from 
exhilarating sounds raised in their various state-rooms by the 
seventy passengers who were too ill to get up to breakfast.  I say 
nothing of them:  for although I lay listening to this concert for 
three or four days, I don't think I heard it for more than a 
quarter of a minute, at the expiration of which term, I lay down 
again, excessively sea-sick.

Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation of the 
term:  I wish I had been:  but in a form which I have never seen or 
heard described, though I have no doubt it is very common.  I lay 
there, all the day long, quite coolly and contentedly; with no 
sense of weariness, with no desire to get up, or get better, or 
take the air; with no curiosity, or care, or regret, of any sort or 
degree, saving that I think I can remember, in this universal 
indifference, having a kind of lazy joy - of fiendish delight, if 
anything so lethargic can be dignified with the title - in the fact 
of my wife being too ill to talk to me.  If I may be allowed to 
illustrate my state of mind by such an example, I should say that I 
was exactly in the condition of the elder Mr. Willet, after the 
incursion of the rioters into his bar at Chigwell.  Nothing would 
have surprised me.  If, in the momentary illumination of any ray of 
intelligence that may have come upon me in the way of thoughts of 
Home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and bell, had come into 
that little kennel before me, broad awake in broad day, and, 
apologising for being damp through walking in the sea, had handed 
me a letter directed to myself, in familiar characters, I am 
certain I should not have felt one atom of astonishment:  I should 
have been perfectly satisfied.  If Neptune himself had walked in, 
with a toasted shark on his trident, I should have looked upon the 
event as one of the very commonest everyday occurrences.

Once - once - I found myself on deck.  I don't know how I got 
there, or what possessed me to go there, but there I was; and 
completely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair of 
boots such as no weak man in his senses could ever have got into.  
I found myself standing, when a gleam of consciousness came upon 
me, holding on to something.  I don't know what.  I think it was 
the boatswain:  or it may have been the pump:  or possibly the cow.  
I can't say how long I had been there; whether a day or a minute.  
I recollect trying to think about something (about anything in the 
whole wide world, I was not particular) without the smallest 
effect.  I could not even make out which was the sea, and which the 
sky, for the horizon seemed drunk, and was flying wildly about in 
all directions.  Even in that incapable state, however, I 
recognised the lazy gentleman standing before me:  nautically clad 
in a suit of shaggy blue, with an oilskin hat.  But I was too 
imbecile, although I knew it to be he, to separate him from his 
dress; and tried to call him, I remember, PILOT.  After another 
interval of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and 
recognised another figure in its place.  It seemed to wave and 
fluctuate before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady 
looking-glass; but I knew it for the captain; and such was the 
cheerful influence of his face, that I tried to smile:  yes, even 
then I tried to smile.  I saw by his gestures that he addressed me; 
but it was a long time before I could make out that he remonstrated 
against my standing up to my knees in water - as I was; of course I 
don't know why.  I tried to thank him, but couldn't.  I could only 
point to my boots - or wherever I supposed my boots to be - and say 
in a plaintive voice, 'Cork soles:' at the same time endeavouring, 
I am told, to sit down in the pool.  Finding that I was quite 
insensible, and for the time a maniac, he humanely conducted me 
below.

There I remained until I got better:  suffering, whenever I was 
recommended to eat anything, an amount of anguish only second to 
that which is said to be endured by the apparently drowned, in the 
process of restoration to life.  One gentleman on board had a 
letter of introduction to me from a mutual friend in London.  He 
sent it below with his card, on the morning of the head-wind; and I 
was long troubled with the idea that he might be up, and well, and 
a hundred times a day expecting me to call upon him in the saloon.  
I imagined him one of those cast-iron images - I will not call them 
men - who ask, with red faces, and lusty voices, what sea-sickness 
means, and whether it really is as bad as it is represented to be.  
This was very torturing indeed; and I don't think I ever felt such 
perfect gratification and gratitude of heart, as I did when I heard 
from the ship's doctor that he had been obliged to put a large 
mustard poultice on this very gentleman's stomach.  I date my 
recovery from the receipt of that intelligence.

It was materially assisted though, I have no doubt, by a heavy gale 
of wind, which came slowly up at sunset, when we were about ten 
days out, and raged with gradually increasing fury until morning,