Читать книгу Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Letters & Travel Sketches from Europe онлайн

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Our voyage out was called "a good run." It was voted, unanimously, to be "an extraordinarily good passage," "a pleasant voyage;" yet the ship rocked the whole time from side to side with a steady, dizzy, continuous motion, like a great cradle. I had a new sympathy for babies, poor little things, who are rocked hours at a time without so much as a "by your leave" in the case. No wonder there are so many stupid people in the world.

There is no place where killing time is so much of a systematic and avowed object as in one of these short runs. In a six months' voyage people give up to their situation, and make arrangements to live a regular life; but the ten days that now divide England and America are not long enough for any thing. The great question is how to get them off; they are set up, like tenpins, to be bowled at; and happy he whose ball prospers. People with strong heads, who can stand the incessant swing of the boat, may read or write. Then there is one's berth, a never-failing resort, where one may analyze at one's leisure the life and emotions of an oyster in the mud. Walking the deck is a means of getting off some half hours more. If a ship heaves in sight, or a porpoise tumbles up, or, better still, a whale spouts, it makes an immense sensation.