So faded that “white-faced shore, whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tide”; and before the end of the year we were to look upon another of a very different complexion, low, swampy, and muddy; fringed with cocoanut trees, at the foot of which jackals shrieked, making night hideous, and around which mosquitoes buzzed and bit, as with the avowed mission of scaring away nature’s sweet restorer. To the officers and crew all the bustle of getting under weigh was of course familiar; but to some fifty passengers, starting for the most part on their first voyage, it all seemed chaos: anon a stentorian voice gave an order, resulting in a tramping of feet and the thud of ropes falling on the deck, to the accompaniment of “Cheery, boys, oh!” or some other ditty that was prime favourite in those days. Having made a fair offing, the good old ship bore steadily down channel, the pilot entering his boat somewhere off Start Point, and his “God speed!” seemed to sever the last link that bound us to the mother country. Even in a comparatively calm sea the movement of an East Indiaman was sufficient to test one’s sea-going qualities, so that, when the bells had been struck for meals, the cuddy table presented numerous gaps, while certain ominous sounds proceeding from the direction of the private accommodation announced to the happy few the advent of that terrible ordeal _mal-de-mer_. Happily for the majority of mortals it soon wears itself out; and the stomach, conforming to the law that “use is second nature,” soon becomes tolerant of the new order of things, and ceases to resent the innovation of digesting under conditions of perpetual motion. I only came across one case in which sea-sickness became a source of positive danger. The sufferer, a hale and healthy man on coming aboard, was reduced in the course of a couple of months to a mere bag of bones. What medical aid failed to do was accomplished by nature; his sickness ceased, and in lieu thereof he acquired an insatiable appetite which distressed him. He apologized for the amount that he ate at meals, and for filling his pockets with biscuits afterwards; but he was powerless to restrain himself, so that by the time we arrived at our destination he was the counterpart of his original self. I never saw him again, but I imagine that, if he did ever return to Europe, his path lay through unexplored regions, as I believe he would have attempted to traverse them on foot rather than again enter a cabin. Personally, I never experienced sea-sickness; the only influence that the motion of the ship had over me was that I fell asleep on the least provocation, which was very many times a day, as reading and writing were equally out of the question.