For two days and two nights, while the good
ship floundered on the tempestuous bosom of the overwrought ocean,
they were gone from human ken. On the afternoon of the third day,
the sea being calmer now, but still sufficiently rough to satisfy
the most exacting, a few hardy and convalescent souls sat in a
shawl-wrapped row on the lee side of the ship.
There came two stewards, bearing with them pillows and blankets
and rugs. These articles were disposed to advantage in two steamer
chairs. Then the stewards hurried away; but presently they
reappeared, dragging the limp and dangling forms of the bridal
couple from the central part of Ohio. But oh, my countrymen, what
a spectacle! And what a change from what had been!
The going-away gown was wrinkled, as though worn for a period of
time by one suddenly and sorely stricken in the midst of health.
The bride's once well-coifed hair hung in lank disarray about a
face that was the color of prime old sage cheese--yellow, with a
fleck of green here and there--and in her wan and rolling eye was
the hunted look of one who hears something unpleasant stirring a
long way off and fears it is coming this way.
Side by side the stewards stretched them prone on their chairs and
tucked them in. Her face was turned from him. For some time
both of them lay there without visible signs of life--just two
muffled, misery-stricken heaps.
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