were
thrown forward with their faces on their plates. This was treatment
which probably John Bull would not like; but being a philosopher, and
besides a native of an island, he would endure it as one of the
necessities of nature. But there were four French passengers on board
who took it in a different way, and probably conceiving that a vessel at
sea was something in the nature of a stage-coach, and the Indian ocean a
high-road, they felt themselves peculiarly ill-used by this tossing; and
at every instance of having a bottle of wine emptied into their drapery,
they regarded it as a national insult, and complained bitterly to the
captain. The French are a belligerent people, and we are surprised that
this series of aggressions by the billows has not been taken up by Mons.
Thiers and his friends, as an additional evidence of the malice of
England to the _grande nation_. Sea-sickness, starvation, and the loss
of their claret, were acts worthy, indeed, of _perfide Albion_. The
captain himself was one of the victims to the "movement." The fair
tourist thus draws his portrait--whether the captain will admire either
the sketch or the limner, is another question. He is described as "an
immensely fat, punchy man, resembling a huge ball, with great fat red
cheeks which almost conceal his eyes, and a small turned-up nose." He
was, of course, always seated at the head of the table, and, she
supposed, considered it beneath his dignity to have his chair tied; but
this world is all made up of compromises and compensations--if the
captain preserved his dignity, he lost his balance. A surge came, "his
fixity of tenure was gone in a moment, and this solid dignitary was shot
forth, chair and all, and rolled against the bulkhead. Every body was in
roars of laughter."

But though all this was toil and trouble for the miserable lords and
ladies of the creation, it was delight for the masters and mistresses of
the mighty element around them. The inhabitants of the ocean were in
full sport; whales were seen rushing through the brine, porpoises were
sporting with their sleek skins in the highest enjoyment through the
billows, and shoals of dolphins filled the waves with their splendid
pea-green and azure. It was an ocean fete, a _bal-pare_ of the finny
tribe, a gala-day of nature; while miserable men and women were
shrinking, and shivering, and sinking in heart, in the midst of the
animation, enjoyment, and magnificence of the world of waters