By some happy fortune I was not seasick.—­That was a thing to be proud of.  I had not always escaped before.  If there is one thing in the world that will make a man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day it sea, when nearly all his comrades are seasick.  Soon a venerable fossil, shawled to the chin and bandaged like a mummy, appeared at the door of the after deck-house, and the next lurch of the ship shot him into my arms.  I said: 

“Good-morning, Sir.  It is a fine day.”

He put his hand on his stomach and said, “Oh, my!” and then staggered away and fell over the coop of a skylight.

Presently another old gentleman was projected from the same door with great violence.  I said: 

“Calm yourself, Sir—­There is no hurry.  It is a fine day, Sir.”

He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said “Oh, my!” and reeled away.

In a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly from the same door, clawing at the air for a saving support.  I said: 

“Good morning, Sir.  It is a fine day for pleasuring.  You were about to say—­”

“Oh, my!”

I thought so.  I anticipated him, anyhow.  I stayed there and was bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour, perhaps; and all I got out of any of them was “Oh, my!”

I went away then in a thoughtful mood.  I said, this is a good pleasure excursion.  I like it.  The passengers are not garrulous, but still they are sociable.  I like those old people, but somehow they all seem to have the “Oh, my” rather bad.

I knew what was the matter with them.  They were seasick.  And I was glad of it.  We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves.  Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant; walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the breezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but these are all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing people suffering the miseries of seasickness.

I picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon.  At one time I was climbing up the quarterdeck when the vessel’s stem was in the sky; I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable.  Somebody ejaculated: 

“Come, now, that won’t answer.  Read the sign up there—­no smoking abaft the wheel!”

It was Captain Duncan, chief of the expedition.  I went forward, of course.  I saw a long spyglass lying on a desk in one of the upper-deck state-rooms back of the pilot-house and reached after it—­there was a ship in the distance.

“Ah, ah—­hands off!  Come out of that!”

I came out of that.  I said to a deck-sweep—­but in a low voice: 

“Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant voice?”

“It’s Captain Bursley—­executive officer—­sailing master.”