Who are these that sit by the long dinner-table in the forward cabin, with a most unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare?  Their eyes are closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, their lips are quite bloodless, and to every offer of good cheer, their “No, thank you,” is as faintly uttered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips.  Can they be the same that, an hour ago, were so composed, so jovial, so full of dangerous defiance to the old man of the sea?  The officer who carves the roast-beef offers at the same time a slice of fat;—­this is too much; a panic runs through the ranks, and the rout is instantaneous and complete.  The ghost of what each man was disappears through the trap-door of his state-room, and the hell which the theatre faintly pictures behind the scenes begins in good earnest.

For to what but to Dante’s “Inferno” can we liken this steamboat-cabin, with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives?  What are these sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but the alti guai rehearsed by the poet?  Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,—­“Nice mutton-chop, Sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?” Cries of “No, no!” resound, and the wretched turn again, and groan.  The philanthropist has lost the movement of the age,—­keeled up in an upper berth, convulsively embracing a blanket, what conservative more immovable than he?  The great man of the party refrains from his large theories, which, like the circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin somewhere and end nowhere.  As we have said, he expounds himself no more, the significant fore-finger is down, the eye no longer imprisons yours.  But if you ask him how he does, he shakes himself, as if, like Farinata,—­

  “avesse l’ inferno in gran dispetto,”—­

“he had a very contemptible opinion of hell.”  Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, that it blows every night, and that it rolls through the twenty-four hours till the whole world seems as if turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to chaos, and fearing to launch away.  The captain comes and says,—­“It is true, you have a nasty, short, chopping sea hereabouts; but you see, she is spinning away down South jolly!” And this is the Gulf-Stream!

But all things have an end, and most things have two.  After the third day, a new development manifests itself.  Various shapeless masses are carried upstairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering heaps.  From these larvae gradually emerge features and voices,—­the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning life.  They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of recognition,—­the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering angel, and, lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for pickled oysters.  And so ends my description of our sea-sickness.