Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/319

 ABOUT ALL KINDS OF SHIPS

Columbus s ship being small and very old, we know that we may draw from these two facts several abso lute certainties in the way of minor details which history has left unrecorded. For instance: being small, we know that she rolled and pitched and tumbled in any ordinary sea, and stood on her head or her tail, or lay down with her ear in the water, when storm seas ran high; also, that she was used to having billows plunge aboard and wash her decks from stem to stern; also, that the storm racks were on the table all the w^ay over, and that nevertheless a man s soup was oftener landed in his lap than in his stomach; also, that the dining-saloon was about ten feet by seven, dark, airless, and suffocating with oil-stench; also, that there was only about one state room, the size of a grave, with a tier of two or three berths in it of the dimensions and comfortableness of coffins, and that when the light was out the darkness in there was so thick and real that you could bite into it and chew it like gum ; also, that the only promenade was on the lofty poop-deck astern (for the ship was shaped like a high-quarter shoe) a streak sixteen feet long by three feet wide, all the rest of the vessel being littered with ropes and flooded by the seas.

We know all these things to be true, from the mere fact that we know the vessel was small. As the vessel was old, certain other truths follow, as matters of course. For instance : she was full of rats ; she was full of cockroaches ; the heavy seas made her seams open and shut like your fingers, and she leaked like a basket; where leakage is, there also, of neces-

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