Читать книгу Into the Frozen South онлайн

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At midnight I went down below again and got to work, though my stoking would not have won a prize. Since no one likes to admit that Neptune has beaten him, I deluded myself into believing that I had caught a chill by sitting in the cold air on deck after the stifling heat of the stokehold. Any excuse serves a victim to mal de mer! Then, too, there was the question of sea-legs. There were so many things to fall against, and most of them were either very hot or very sharp. The things one tried to grab when the ship took one of her soul-shifting rolls floated away out of reach; the floors were mostly on end, so that, without exaggerating, I decided that death could hold no greater terrors. Limp and sore and miserable, I found it difficult to stick it out through the watch; but by assuring myself that it wasn’t really seasickness at all so much as that chill, I managed it, and crawled bunkwards feeling several times more dead than alive. No doubt I could have succumbed, thrown up the sponge, and let the unkindly sea have its way with me; but already, short as had been my sea service, I was beginning to learn the deep-water lesson that aboard a small ship every man counts, and that if one man shirks his job that same job must be divided amongst others who already have enough to do.