consciousness that somebody's hands tied it
about my head. Then we started. We climbed heights, we descended depths
indescribable, in that short walk to the saloon, and there was a queer
feeling of having a windmill, instead of a head, upon my shoulders. A
number of sympathizing faces were nodding in the most remarkable manner,
as we reached the door, and the tables performed antic evolutions.

"Take me back!" and the berth and the little round stewardess received
me. There followed a night of misery. One can form no idea, save from
experience, of the horrors of the first night upon an ocean steamer.
There are the whir, and buzz, and jar, and rattle, and bang of the screw
and engine; the pitching and rolling of the ship, with the sensation of
standing upright for a moment, and then of being made to rest
comfortably upon the top of your head; the sense of undergoing internal
somersaults, to say nothing of describing every known curve externally.
You study physiology involuntarily, and doubt if your heart, your lungs,
or indeed any of your internal organs, are firmly attached, after all;
if you shall not lose them at the next lurch of the ship. Your head is
burning with fever, your hands and feet like ice, and you feel dimly,
but wretchedly, that this is but the beginning of sorrows; that there
are a dozen more days to come. You are conscious of a vague wonder (as
the night lengthens out interminably) what eternity _can_ be, since time
is so long. The bells strike the half hours, tormenting you with
calculations which amount to nothing. Everything within the room, as
well as without, swings, and rolls, and rattles. You are confident your
bottles in the rack will go next, and don't much care if they do, though
you lie and dread the crash. You are tormented with thirst, and the
ice-water is in that same rack, just beyond your reach. The candle in
its silver case, hinged against the wall, swings back and forth with
dizzy motion, throwing moving distorted shadows over everything, and
making the night like a sickly day. You long for darkness, and, when at
last the light grows dim, until only a red spark remains and the smoke
that adds its mite to your misery, long for its return. At regular
intervals you hear the tramp, tramp, overhead, of the relieving watch;
and, in the midst of fitful slumbers, the hoarse voices of the sailors,
as the wind freshens and they hoist the sails, wake you from frightful
dreams. At the first gray d