The Collected Works of Susan Coolidge: 7 Novels, 35+ Short Stories, Essays & Poems (Illustrated). Susan Coolidge
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and Katy, after helping them to settle in their staterooms, found herself too dizzy and ill to sit up a moment longer, and thankfully resorted to her own.
As the night came on, the wind grew stronger and the motion worse. The “Spartacus” had the reputation of being a dreadful “roller,” and seemed bound to justify it on this particular voyage. Down, down, down the great hull would slide till Katy would hold her breath with fear lest it might never right itself again; then slowly, slowly the turn would be made, and up, up, up it would go, till the cant on the other side was equally alarming. On the whole, Katy preferred to have her own side of the ship, the downward one; for it was less difficult to keep herself in the berth, from which she was in continual danger of being thrown. The night seemed endless, for she was too frightened to sleep except in broken snatches; and when day dawned, and she looked through the little round pane of glass in the port-hole, only gray sky and gray weltering waves and flying spray and rain met her view.
“Oh, dear, why do people ever go to sea, unless they must?” she thought feebly to herself. She wanted to get up and see how Mrs. Ashe had lived through the night, but the attempt to move made her so miserably ill that she was glad to sink again on her pillows.
The stewardess looked in with offers of tea and toast, the very idea of which was simply dreadful, and pronounced the other lady “‘orridly ill, worse than you are, Miss,” and the little girl “takin’ on dreadful in the h’upper berth.” Of this fact Katy soon had audible proof; for as her dizzy senses rallied a little, she could hear Amy in the opposite stateroom crying and sobbing pitifully. She seemed to be angry as well as sick, for she was scolding her poor mother in the most vehement fashion.
“I hate being at sea,” Katy heard her say. “I won’t stay in this nasty old ship. Mamma! Mamma! do you hear me? I won’t stay in this ship! It wasn’t a bit kind of you to bring me to such a horrid place. It was very unkind; it was cru-el. I want to go back, mamma. Tell the captain to take me back to the land. Mamma, why don’t you speak to me? Oh, I am so sick and so very un-happy. Don’t you wish you were dead? I do!”
And then came another storm of sobs, but never a sound from Mrs. Ashe, who, Katy suspected, was too ill to speak. She felt very sorry for poor little Amy, raging there in her high berth like some imprisoned creature, but she was powerless to help her. She could only resign herself to her own discomforts, and try to believe that somehow, sometime, this state of things must mend,—either they should all get to land or all go to the bottom and be drowned, and at that moment she didn’t care very much which it turned out to be.
The gale increased as the day wore on, and the vessel pitched dreadfully. Twice Katy was thrown out of her berth on the floor; then the stewardess came and fixed a sort of movable side to the berth, which held her in, but made her feel like a child fastened into a railed crib. At intervals she could still hear Amy crying and scolding her mother, and conjectured that they were having a dreadful time of it in the other stateroom. It was all like a bad dream. “And they call this travelling for pleasure!” thought poor Katy.
One droll thing happened in the course of the second night,—at least it seemed droll afterward; at the time Katy was too uncomfortable to enjoy it. Amid the rush of the wind, the creaking of the ship’s timbers, and the shrill buzz of the screw, she heard a sound of queer little footsteps in the entry outside of her open door, hopping and leaping together in an odd irregular way, like a regiment of mice or toy soldiers. Nearer and nearer they came; and Katy opening her eyes saw a procession of boots and shoes of all sizes and shapes, which had evidently been left on the floors or at the doors of various staterooms, and which in obedience to the lurchings of the vessel had collected in the cabin. They now seemed to be acting in concert with one another, and really looked alive as they bumped and trotted side by side, and two by two, in at the door and up close to her bedside. There they remained for several moments executing what looked like a dance; then the leading shoe turned on its heel as if giving a signal to the others, and they all hopped slowly again into the passage-way and disappeared. It was exactly like one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy-tales, Katy wrote to Clover afterward. She heard them going down the cabin; but how it ended, or whether the owners of the boots and shoes ever got their own particular pairs again, she never knew.
Toward morning the gale abated, the sea became smoother, and she dropped asleep. When she woke the sun was struggling through the clouds, and she felt better.
The stewardess opened the port-hole to freshen the air, and helped her to wash her face and smooth her tangled hair; then she produced a little basin of gruel and a triangular bit of toast, and Katy found that her appetite was come again and she could eat.
“And ‘ere’s a letter, ma’am, which has come for you by post this morning,” said the nice old stewardess, producing an envelope from her pocket, and eying her patient with great satisfaction.
“By post!” cried Katy, in amazement; “why, how can that be?” Then catching sight of Rose’s handwriting on the envelope, she understood, and smiled at her own simplicity.
The stewardess beamed at her as she opened it, then saying again, “Yes, ‘m, by post, m’m,” withdrew, and left Katy to enjoy the little surprise.
The letter was not long, but it was very like its writer. Rose drew a picture of what Katy would probably be doing at the time it reached her,—a picture so near the truth that Katy felt as if Rose must have the spirit of prophecy, especially as she kindly illustrated the situation with a series of pen-and-ink drawings, in which Katy was depicted as prone in her berth, refusing with horror to go to dinner, looking longingly backward toward the quarter where the United States was supposed to be, and fishing out of her port-hole with a crooked pin in hopes of grappling the submarine cable and sending a message to her family to come out at once and take her home. It ended with this short “poem,” over which Katy laughed till Mrs. Ashe called feebly across the entry to ask what was the matter?
“Break, break, break And mis-behave, O sea, And I wish that my tongue could utter The hatred I feel for thee! “Oh, well for the fisherman’s child On the sandy beach at his play; Oh, well for all sensible folk Who are safe at home to-day! “But this horrible ship keeps on, And is never a moment still, And I yearn for the touch of the nice dry land, Where I needn’t feel so ill! “Break! break! break! There is no good left in me; For the dinner I ate on the shore so late Has vanished into the sea!”
Laughter is very restorative after the forlornity of sea-sickness; and Katy was so stimulated by her letter that she managed to struggle into her dressing-gown and slippers and across the entry to Mrs. Ashe’s stateroom. Amy had fallen asleep at last and must not be waked up, so their interview was conducted in whispers. Mrs. Ashe had by no means got to the tea-and-toast stage yet, and was feeling miserable enough.
“I have had the most dreadful time with Amy,” she said. “All day yesterday, when she wasn’t sick she was raging at me from the upper berth, and I too ill to say a word in reply. I never knew her so naughty! And it seemed very neglectful not to come to see after you, poor dear child! but really I couldn’t raise my head.”
“Neither could I, and I felt just as guilty not to be taking care of you,” said Katy. “Well, the worst is over with all of us, I hope. The vessel doesn’t pitch half so much now, and the stewardess says we shall feel a great deal better as soon as we get on deck. She is coming presently to help me up; and when Amy wakes, won’t you let her be dressed, and I will take care of her while Mrs. Barrett attends to you.”
“I don’t think I can be dressed,” sighed poor Mrs. Ashe. “I feel as if I should just lie here till we get to Liverpool.”
“Oh no, h’indeed, mum,—no, you won’t,” put in Mrs. Barrett, who at that moment appeared, gruel-cup in hand. “I don’t never let my ladies lie in their berths a moment longer than there is need of. I h’always gets them on deck as soon as possible to get the h’air. It’s the best medicine you can ‘ave, ma’am, the fresh h’air; h’indeed it h’is.”
Stewardesses are all-powerful on board ship, and Mrs. Barrett was so persuasive as well as positive that it was not possible to resist her. She got Katy into her