By this time we began to experience certain very uncomfortable qualms, felt more or less by landsmen and sailors on their first invasion of the ocean. Gay and jocund looks were speedily changed into those of a more sickly character, the unpitied and unpitying malady, as the sea got rough, spreading its influence around. As for the griffins, or young adventurers, they vanished in silence to the lower regions, betaking themselves to their proper dens, where they lay perdue, meditating on their hapless fate; and, in a situation bordering on despair, were indifferent as to whether they went to the bottom of the deep, or were dismissed from the world by a shorter road. It is wonderful how soon the ardour of even the most ambitious hero is cooled by a bout of sea-sickness; the frame and spirit are paralysed, and all the energies of mind and body are lying prostrate, and he cares not a farthing for himself, or any human being. The worst of it is, no one has compassion on the wretched victim, and though he may seem absolutely in a dying state, the healthy and older hands only laugh or grin at his distress; shaking their contented sides, while they cruelly prescribe for the unhappy patient a fat mutton chop, or a wedge of greasy bacon. For the smallest spot of solid earth upon which to set one's foot, even though it were in a barren wilderness, the wealth of India would with gladness be exchanged, and, in bitterness of heart, the meanest reptile that ever crawled upon the surface of dry land becomes an object of envy. Our gallant bark still ploughed her way through the restless and sparkling waters, bearing the faint and the light-hearted, the joyful together with the sad, onward to the warm and renovating atmosphere of southern regions. Even when our calamities were at their worst, there was always something to keep us from sinking into total despondency. Among other resources against care and ennui, there was the amusing society of a gentleman, named Charles, our worthy surgeon, a stout, broad shouldered Milesian. He was the drollest fellow imaginable, of such infinite humour that he not only was the means of banishing the blue devils from those who were in health, but of raising the spirits of the sick and down-cast. In short he was a genius that could keep the table in a roar.