after it had goaded him over two easy-chairs and a skylight,
‘Screw!’
Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting moments, when
bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there was ‘hot pot’
in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we had had regularly every
day was described in that official document by a new name, – under
such excitements, one would almost believe it hushed. The ceremony
of washing plates on deck, performed after every meal by a circle
as of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep
it down. Hauling the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting the
twenty-four hours’ run, altering the ship’s time by the meridian,
casting the waste food overboard, and attracting the eager gulls
that followed in our wake, – these events would suppress it for a
while. But the instant any break or pause took place in any such
diversion, the voice would be at it again, importuning us to the
last extent. A newly married young pair, who walked the deck
affectionately some twenty miles per day, would, in the full flush
of their exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and stand
trembling, but otherwise immovable, under its reproaches.
When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when the
time approached for our retiring to our dens for the night; when
the lighted candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer; when the
deserted glasses with spoons in them grew more and more numerous;
when waifs of toasted cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter
slid languidly to and fro in the table-racks; when the man who
always read had shut up his book, and blown out his candle; when
the man who always talked had ceased from troubling; when the man
who was always medically reported as going to have delirium tremens
had put it off till to-morrow; when the man who every night devoted
himself to a midnight smoke on deck two hours in length, and who
every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards, was buttoning
himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil: for then, as we
fell off one by one, and, entering our several hutches, came into a
peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the voice
would shake us to the centre. Woe to us when we sat down on our
sofa, watching the swinging candle for ever trying and retrying to
stand upon his head! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we
appeared in our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizontally
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
from the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more facile towels!
Then would the voice especially claim us for its prey, and rend us
all to pieces.
Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the voice grows
angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and under the pillow, under
the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the ship and under the
sea, seeming to rise from the foundations under the earth with
every scoop of the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so?), always
the voice. Vain to deny its existence in the night season;
impossible to be hard of hearing; screw, screw, screw! Sometimes
it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a whirr, like a
ferocious firework, – except that it never expends itself, but is
always ready to go off again; sometimes it seems to be in anguish,
and shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified by its last plunge,
and has a fit which causes it to struggle, quiver, and for an
instant stop. And now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so
fiercely screwed through time and space, day and night, fair
weather and foul, CAN roll.
Did she ever take a roll before like that last? Did she ever take
a roll before like this worse one that is coming now? Here is the
partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee side. Are we ever
coming up again together? I think not; the partition and I are so
long about it that I really do believe we have overdone it this