Page:The Innocents Abroad (1869).djvu/62

48 confidence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on deck, and said with great decision:

“This thing’s a swindle!”

“What’s a swindle?”

“Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois—gave $150 for her—and I thought she was good. And, by George, she is good on shore, but somehow she don’t keep up her lick here on the water—gets seasick, may be. She skips; she runs along regular enough till half-past eleven, and then, all of a sudden, she lets down. I’ve set that old regulator up faster and faster, till I’ve shoved it clear around, but it don’t do any good; she just distances every watch in the ship, and clatters along in a way that’s astonishing till it is noon, but them eight bells always gets in about ten minutes ahead of her any way. I don’t know what to do with her now. She’s doing all she can—she’s going her best gait, but it won’t save her. Now, don’t you know, there ain’t a watch in the ship that’s making better time than she is: but what does it signify? When you hear them eight bells you’ll find her just about ten minutes short of her score, sure.”

The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the watch was “on its best gait,” and so nothing was left him but to fold his hands and see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the captain, and he explained to him the mystery of “ship-time,” and set his troubled mind at rest. This young man asked a great many questions about seasickness before we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were, and how he was to tell when he had it. He found out.

We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, &c., of course, and by and by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular list of sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant carmine color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly, that spreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot or two