Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion. Mark Twain

      II

      At dinner, six o’clock, the same people assembled whom we had talked with on deck and seen at luncheon and breakfast this second day out, and at dinner the evening before. That is to say, three journeying ship-masters, a Boston merchant, and a returning Bermudian who had been absent from his Bermuda thirteen years; these sat on the starboard side. On the port side sat the Reverend in the seat of honor; the pale young man next to him; I next; next to me an aged Bermudian, returning to his sunny islands after an absence of twenty-seven years. Of course, our captain was at the head of the table, the purser at the foot of it. A small company, but small companies are pleasantest.

      No racks upon the table; the sky cloudless, the sun brilliant, the blue sea scarcely ruffled; then what had become of the four married couples, the three bachelors, and the active and obliging doctor from the rural districts of Pennsylvania? – for all these were on deck when we sailed down New York harbor. This is the explanation. I quote from my note-book:

      Thursday, 3.30 P.M. Under way, passing the Battery. The large party, of four married couples, three bachelors, and a cheery, exhilarating doctor from the wilds of Pennsylvania, are evidently traveling together. All but the doctor grouped in camp-chairs on deck.

      Passing principal fort. The doctor is one of those people who has an infallible preventive of seasickness; is flitting from friend to friend administering it and saying, “Don’t you be afraid; I know this medicine; absolutely infallible; prepared under my own supervision.” Takes a dose himself, intrepidly.

      4.15 P.M. Two of those ladies have struck their colors, notwithstanding the “infallible.” They have gone below. The other two begin to show distress.

      5 P.M. Exit one husband and one bachelor. These still had their infallible in cargo when they started, but arrived at the companionway without it.

      5.10. Lady No. 3, two bachelors, and one married man have gone below with their own opinion of the infallible.

      5.20. Passing Quarantine Hulk. The infallible has done the business for all the party except the Scotchman’s wife and the author of that formidable remedy.

      Nearing the Light-Ship. Exit the Scotchman’s wife, head drooped on stewardess’s shoulder.

      Entering the open sea. Exit doctor!

      The rout seems permanent; hence the smallness of the company at table since the voyage began. Our captain is a grave, handsome Hercules of thirty-five, with a brown hand of such majestic size that one cannot eat for admiring it and wondering if a single kid or calf could furnish material for gloving it.

      Conversation not general; drones along between couples. One catches a sentence here and there. Like this, from Bermudian of thirteen years’ absence: “It is the nature of women to ask trivial, irrelevant, and pursuing questions – questions that pursue you from a beginning in nothing to a run-to-cover in nowhere.” Reply of Bermudian of twenty-seven years’ absence: “Yes; and to think they have logical, analytical minds and argumentative ability. You see ’em begin to whet up whenever they smell argument in the air.” Plainly these be philosophers.

      Twice since we left port our engines have stopped for a couple of minutes at a time. Now they stop again. Says the pale young man, meditatively, “There! – that engineer is sitting down to rest again.”

      Grave stare from the captain, whose mighty jaws cease to work, and whose harpooned potato stops in midair on its way to his open, paralyzed mouth. Presently he says in measured tones, “Is it your idea that the engineer of this ship propels her by a crank turned by his own hands?”