'
Martin was too far gone in the lassitude of sea-sickness to make any
reply to these words, or even to attend to them as they were spoken. And
the subject of their discourse returning at this crisis with some hot
tea, effectually put a stop to any resumption of the theme by Mr Tapley;
who, when the meal was over and he had adjusted Martin's bed, went up on
deck to wash the breakfast service, which consisted of two half-pint tin
mugs, and a shaving-pot of the same metal.
It is due to Mark Tapley to state that he suffered at least as much from
sea-sickness as any man, woman, or child, on board; and that he had a
peculiar faculty of knocking himself about on the smallest provocation,
and losing his legs at every lurch of the ship. But resolved, in his
usual phrase, to 'come out strong' under disadvantageous circumstances,
he was the life and soul of the steerage, and made no more of stopping
in the middle of a facetious conversation to go away and be excessively
ill by himself, and afterwards come back in the very best and gayest of
tempers to resume it, than if such a course of proceeding had been the
commonest in the world.
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