Strona:Jerome K. Jerome - Trzej ludzie w jednej łodzi.djvu/30

man. If not he and another man, then it was he by himself.
 It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick — on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
 If most men were like a fellow I saw on the Yarmouth boat one day, I can account for the seeming enigma easily enough. It was just off Southend pier, I recollect and he was leaning out through one of the port-holes in a very dangerous position. I went up to him to try and save him.
 „Hi! come further in,“ I said, shaking him by the shoulder. „You‘ll be overboard.“
 „Oh my! I wish I was,“ was the only answer I could get; and there I had to leave him.
 Three weeks afterwards, I met him in the coffee-room of a Bath hotel, talking about his voyages, and explaining, with enthusiasm, how he loved the sea.
 „Good sailor!“ he replied in answer to a mild young man‘s envious query; „well, I did feel a little queer once, I confess. It was off Cape Horn. The vessel was wrecked the next morning.“
 I said:
 „Weren‘t you a little shaky by Southend