A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 40: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A QUEER RACE. 87 CHAPTER VII. THE FEVER SHIP. We were now on the verge of the tropics; the weather was perfect, the wind fair, and the sea, covered with small, white-crested waves, chasing each other in wild revelry, superb; the days were delightful; the nights, lighted up. by a great round moon, gloriously serene. he mere fact of living became a pleasure; the noon- day’s heat was tempered by a balmy breeze, and basking in the sun, and lying continually in the open air (I slept ou deck), health tingled to my fingers’ ends, Jt was a pleasure to feel the brave ship surging through the sea, and to watch her great sails as they bellied to the breeze. Hor days together no sailor had need to go aloft, and one day was so like another that time seemed to stand still. Yet in this very monotony there was an inexplicable charm; it acted as a spiritual anodyne, ban- ishing care,and lulling the mind to sleep. I ceased to think about my future, and Liverpool and business were so remote that they might never have been. Hven Amy receded into the far distance, and it was hard to realize that I had once dreamed of marriage and suffered from the pangs of disappointed love. ite Why, I often asked myself, had I not been brought up as a soldier or sailor instead of an underwriter?’ And I wondered how people could dislike the sea. ‘True, there were sometimes storms, and the weather was not. always serene; but, after all, storms were few and far between, and I felt sure that the hardships and perils of a seaman’s life were grossly exaggerated. Only just before I left Liverpool, [ met a man who had crossed the Atlantic half a dozen times without so much as encountering a gale of wind; and it was a notorious fact that Al hardwood ships, well commanded and manned, anid not too deep in the water, seldom came to grief. | I one day talked in this strain to Captain Peyton. «I -gaid that I doubted whether a mau was in greater danger on board a good ship than inside a good house, and that life on the ocean wave’was far pleasanter than life ashore. <*{ don’t mean, of course, on board a war-ship in time (E(0) mn Cc JOO cS (G (0)