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Updated: August 14, 2024
There was no such thing as getting one's sea-legs; for we were seldom more than a few hours outside, and had no chance of getting used to the horrible motion. Timaru was reached next day, but we had suffered so frightfully during the night from a chopping sea and an open roadstead, that we went on shore, and entrusted ourselves once more to the old coach.
Success to fair America and our good privateer! This ballad is as long as the cruise, and the rhythm of it seems to show that the writer had not quite got his sea-legs on, in boarding the poetic craft.
We had been practising the "sea-leg" business the day before, and managed to walk along pretty well; but this morning our sea-legs didn't work at all, and we couldn't take a step without hanging on to something. When we got on deck, we found that the first officer, or mate, his name was Randall, with three or four sailors, was throwing the lead to see how deep the water was.
As the two worthies, who had not altogether got their sea-legs, slowly descended the ladder, and threaded their way among the throng of a ship, the discourse did not flag between them.
Chilean ladies and Chilean gentlemen, dazzling Brazilian ladies and pompous Brazilian gentlemen, smug Argentinians, lordly Castilians, garrulous Portuguese, lofty English gentlemen and supercilious English ladies, friendly and irrepressible Americans, all of them swinging their sea-legs with new-found abandon clattered solidly around the wind-swept circuit.
I soon found that my sailing-companion, this sort of dog with horns, had to be tied up entirely. The mistake I made was that I did not chain him to the mast instead of tying him with grass ropes less securely, and this I learned to my cost. Except for the first day, before the beast got his sea-legs on, I had no peace of mind.
He thought, however, that he would not carry any passengers on the first trip in fact, to begin with, he would harness himself to his craft and pull her both out and in, "just till I see how she goes; she's got to find her sea-legs."
Not the Douvres-Calais that day! only that horrible little narrow boat that always upsets me and I such an heroic being, bearing the mighty mediaeval sword, an object of wonder and questioning to sailors, douaniers, passengers alike. As it happened, I was the sole individual on board whose inner organs had not their sea-legs on this occasion.
An' afther thot Oi wint oot, an' walked till Oi come to a hill. An' there was a moon, an' a ould hoose standin' still, which th' moon was not. So Oi stood still to watch it, but bein' tired an' weary an' not havin' got rid o' me sea-legs, Oi sat me doon on th' steps av th' hoose for a bit av a rest, an' t' watch th' moon, thinkin' mebbe she'd stand still by an' by.
And now it was Martin's turn to work, and sit beside the bed and watch, and listen through the long, long nights, to every sound in the gloomy wilderness; and hear poor Mr Tapley, in his wandering fancy, playing at skittles in the Dragon, making love-remonstrances to Mrs Lupin, getting his sea-legs on board the Screw, travelling with old Tom Pinch on English roads, and burning stumps of trees in Eden, all at once.
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