We passed the Whale's Back at the mouth of the Piscataqua, and
the Isles of Shoals loomed up through the hazy atmosphere; and
although the wind was light, and the sea apparently smooth, the
brig began to have a motion an awkward, uneasy motion for
which I could not account, and which, to my great annoyance,
continued to increase as we left the land. I staggered as I
crossed the quarter-deck, and soon after we cleared the harbor,
came near pitching overboard from the platform covering the
sheep-pens. My head was strangely confused, and a dizziness
seized me, which I in vain struggled to shake off. My spirits,
so gay and buoyant as we sailed down the harbor, sunk to zero.

At length I could not resist the conviction that I was assailed
with symptoms of seasickness, a malady which I had always held in
contempt, believing it to exist more in imagination than in fact,
and which I was determined to resist, as unsailor-like and
unmanly. Other symptoms of a less equivocal description, soon
placed the character of my illness beyond a doubt. My woe-begone
looks must have betrayed my feelings, for one of the men told me,
with a quizzical leer, that old Neptune always exacted toll in
advance from a green hand for his passage over the waters.

Mr. Thompson, who seemed to pity my miserable condition, gravely
assured me that exercise was a capital thing as a preventive or
cure for seasickness, and advised me to try the pump. I followed
his advice: a few strokes brought up the bilge water, than which
nothing at that time could have been more insufferably nauseous!
I left the pump in disgust, and retiring to the after part of the
quarter-deck, threw myself down on a coil of rope, unable longer
to struggle with my fate. There I remained unnoticed and uncared