They decided that they needed a rest but a short sea
journey was not good …
You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are
going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore,
light your biggest pipe, and swagger
about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher
Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn’t come.
On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday,
you are able to swallow a little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer
with a wan, sweet smile when kind-hearted
people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about
again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your bag and
umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale,
waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it.
I remember my brother-in-law going for a short sea trip once, for the
benefit of his health. He took a return berth from London to Liverpool; and when he got to Liverpool, the
only thing he was anxious about was to sell that return ticket.
It was offered round the town at a tremendous reduction, so I am told;
and was eventually sold for eighteenpence to a bilious-looking youth who had just been advised by his medical men
to go to the sea-side, and take exercise.