take the air; with no curiosity, or care, or regret, of any sort or
degree, saving that I think I can remember, in this universal
indifference, having a kind of lazy joy – of fiendish delight, if
anything so lethargic can be dignified with the title – in the fact
of my wife being too ill to talk to me. If I may be allowed to
illustrate my state of mind by such an example, I should say that I
was exactly in the condition of the elder Mr. Willet, after the
incursion of the rioters into his bar at Chigwell. Nothing would
have surprised me. If, in the momentary illumination of any ray of
intelligence that may have come upon me in the way of thoughts of
Home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and bell, had come into
that little kennel before me, broad awake in broad day, and,
apologising for being damp through walking in the sea, had handed
me a letter directed to myself, in familiar characters, I am
certain I should not have felt one atom of astonishment: I should
have been perfectly satisfied. If Neptune himself had walked in,
with a toasted shark on his trident, I should have looked upon the
event as one of the very commonest everyday occurrences.
Once – once – I found myself on deck. I don’t know how I got
there, or what possessed me to go there, but there I was; and
completely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair of
boots such as no weak man in his senses could ever have got into.
I found myself standing, when a gleam of consciousness came upon
me, holding on to something. I don’t know what. I think it was
the boatswain: or it may have been the pump: or possibly the cow.
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
I can’t say how long I had been there; whether a day or a minute.
I recollect trying to think about something (about anything in the
whole wide world, I was not particular) without the smallest
effect. I could not even make out which was the sea, and which the
sky, for the horizon seemed drunk, and was flying wildly about in
all directions. Even in that incapable state, however, I
recognised the lazy gentleman standing before me: nautically clad
in a suit of shaggy blue, with an oilskin hat. But I was too
imbecile, although I knew it to be he, to separate him from his
dress; and tried to call him, I remember, PILOT. After another
interval of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and
recognised another figure in its place. It seemed to wave and
fluctuate before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady
looking-glass; but I knew it for the captain; and such was the
cheerful influence of his face, that I tried to smile: yes, even
then I tried to smile. I saw by his gestures that he addressed me;
but it was a long time before I could make out that he remonstrated
against my standing up to my knees in water – as I was; of course I
don’t know why. I tried to thank him, but couldn’t. I could only
point to my boots – or wherever I supposed my boots to be – and say
in a plaintive voice, ‘Cork soles:’ at the same time endeavouring,
I am told, to sit down in the pool. Finding that I was quite
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.