Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1886-02-13 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

WHAT I—a sea captain with a liver? I forgot my fear. I lost eigiat of the raging ocean and the murderous Cascluets, an 1 cross-examined the captain sternly to .licit the truth about his liver, and I learned that he suffered agonies, and that he had dyspepsia and melancholia, and we compared eTraPterlog, u then we fell into each other's arms and wepl tears of i7mpathy, and the man at the wheel ' was so affected that he blew his nose and looked the other way. It was indeed a touching spectacle, but it had its ludicrous side. Here was I sent to sea to do my liver good, and ' the captain of the ship, who was never on land, suffered with all my symptoms. It was for this I had slept in stifling cabins; it was for I this I had been thrown about the deck till my limbs were black and blue; it was for this that I had been blinded with salt spray and made sick by the smell of the engines ; it was for this that I had braved two son'-westerly gales and s hurrieane ; it was for this that I had been drowned a dozen times in anticipation—to find that a sea captain had a liver which would take second prize to my first Woe to the physician who prescribes 4 sea voyage to me again I will figuratively hurl that captain at his head, and smash, destroy, and pulverise him for ever. • The captain and I dined alone in the cabin, and we tasted each other's medicine and corneach other's prescriptions. He told me compared nightmares, and I descriled my blue devils. We looked at each other's tongues and felt each other's pulses, and the poor passengers, all prone and helpless and violently ill on the side seats, looked on in wonder. We had the cross pieces set to hold the plates, for the storm was at its height. and the contents of the cabin were flying from side to side. Tbe captain steered his broth beautifully, but mine capsized Over my knees and scalded my trousers. The mutton, which was lashed to the centre pillar of the cabin, the captain carved, supported by the two stewards, who steadied him; but when we got it on to our plates the difficulty was to put a fork into it to cut it up. The ship lurched and jogged my elbow every minute, and, with the best intention in the world, the fork went now into the tablecloth and now into the dish-cover, but never into the mutton. Still I tried to hit the mark, and should have gone on trying had I not finished up by sticking the fork into the captain. Then I rose from the table. and told the steward to put my plate and its contents away until we got into the Solent , and smooth water. Irrhe rest of the afternoon I ,! spent with the ca-Ptain on the bridge, and we had a most interesting exchange of ideas on the ' subject of liver complaint and dyspepsia. At Southampton we parted, after drinking each other's health in peptone, and the captain has promised to come with me to my doctor directly he gets a holiday, and to allow me to introduce him as a specimen of going to sea for the benefit of your health,  You will gather from- this that I am home, and that my Channel trip is over. That is so. Feebly, but to the best of my endeavour, I have set forth a few of my adventures during the . journey, hoping that some few grains of good wheat may be found among the chaff. I have finished for a time with travel and adventure, and I shall now settle down again into a sober chronicler of things nearer home. I don't know that my temporary abandonment of politics has been an unmixed evil. I fancy the reader must have had a pretty good dose of them in other quarters, so ho will excuse them this week from