insensible, and for the time a maniac, he humanely conducted me
below.

There I remained until I got better: suffering, whenever I was
recommended to eat anything, an amount of anguish only second to
that which is said to be endured by the apparently drowned, in the
process of restoration to life. One gentleman on board had a
letter of introduction to me from a mutual friend in London. He
sent it below with his card, on the morning of the head-wind; and I
was long troubled with the idea that he might be up, and well, and
a hundred times a day expecting me to call upon him in the saloon.
I imagined him one of those cast-iron images - I will not call them
men - who ask, with red faces, and lusty voices, what sea-sickness
means, and whether it really is as bad as it is represented to be.
This was very torturing indeed; and I don't think I ever felt such
perfect gratification and gratitude of heart, as I did when I heard
from the ship's doctor that he had been obliged to put a large
mustard poultice on this very gentleman's stomach. I date my
recovery from the receipt of that intelligence.

It was materially assisted though, I have no doubt, by a heavy gale
of wind, which came slowly up at sunset, when we were about ten
days out, and raged with gradually increasing fury until morning,
saving that it lulled for an hour a little before midnight. There
was something in the unnatural repose of that hour, and in the
after gathering of the storm, so inconceivably awful and
tremendous, that its bursting into full violence was almost a
relief.

The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night I shall