In addition to all this, I had not got my ``sea legs on,’’ was dreadfully sea-sick, with hardly strength enough to hold on to anything, and it was ``pitch dark.’’ This was my condition when I was ordered aloft, for the first time, to reef topsails.

How I got along, I cannot now remember.  I ``laid out’’ on the yards and held on with all my strength.  I could not have been of much service, for I remember having been sick several times before I left the topsail yard, making wild vomits into the black night, to leeward.  Soon all was snug aloft, and we were again allowed to go below.  This I did not consider much of a favor, for the confusion of everything below, and that inexpressible sickening smell, caused by the shaking up of bilge water in the hold, made the steerage but an indifferent refuge from the cold, wet decks.  I had often read of the nautical experiences of others, but I felt as though there could be none worse than mine; for, in addition to every other evil, I could not but remember that this was only the first night of a two years’ voyage.  When we were on deck, we were not much better off, for we were continually ordered about by the officer, who said that it was good for us to be in motion.  Yet anything was better than the horrible state of things below.  I remember very well going to the hatchway and putting my head down, when I was oppressed by nausea, and always being relieved immediately.  It was an effectual emetic.

This state of things continued for two days.

Wednesday, August 20th.  We had the watch on deck from four till eight, this morning.  When we came on deck at four o’clock, we found things much changed for the better.  The sea and wind had gone down, and the stars were out bright.  I experienced a corresponding change in my feelings, yet continued extremely weak from my sickness.  I stood in the waist on the weather side, watching the gradual breaking of the day, and the first streaks of the early light.  Much has been said of the sunrise at sea; but it will not compare with the sunrise on shore.  It lacks the accompaniments of the songs of birds, the awakening hum of humanity, and the glancing of the first beams upon trees, hills, spires, and house-tops, to give it life and spirit.  There is no scenery.  But, although the actual rise of the sun at sea is not so beautiful, yet nothing will compare for melancholy and dreariness with the early breaking of day upon ``Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste.’’

There is something in the first gray streaks stretching along the eastern horizon and throwing an indistinct light upon the face of the deep, which combines with the boundlessness and unknown depth of the sea around, and gives one a feeling of loneliness, of dread, and of melancholy foreboding, which nothing else in nature can.  This gradually passes away as the light grows brighter, and when the sun comes up, the ordinary monotonous sea day begins.