A voyage is to many people like taking an emetic—­they look at the medicine and wish it well over, and look at the sea and wish themselves well over.  Everything looked bright and gay at Dover—­the cliffs seemed whiter than ever—­the sailors had on clean trousers, and the few people that appeared in the streets were dressed in their Sunday best.  The cart-horses were seen feeding leisurely on the hills, and there was a placid calmness about everything on shore, which the travellers would fain have had extended to the sea.  They came slowly and solemnly upon deck, muffled up in cloaks and coats, some with their passage money in their hands, and took their places apparently with the full expectation of being sick.

The French packet-boat first gave symptoms of animation, in the shape of a few vigorous puffs from the boiler, which were responded to by the Royal George, whose rope was slipped without the usual tinkle of the bell, and she shot out to sea, closely followed by the Frenchman, who was succeeded by the other English boat.  Three or four tremendous long protracted dives, each followed by a majestic rise on the bosom of the waves, denoted the crossing of the bar; and just as the creaking of the cordage, the flapping of the sails, and the nervous quivering of the paddles, as they lost their hold of the water, were in full vigour, the mate crossed the deck with a large white basin in his hand, the sight of which turned the stomachs of half the passengers.  Who shall describe the misery that ensued?  The groans and moans of the sufferers, increasing every minute, as the vessel heaved and dived, and rolled and creaked, while hand-basins multiplied as half-sick passengers caught the green countenance and fixed eye of some prostrate sufferer and were overcome themselves.

Mr. Jorrocks, what with his Margate trips, and a most substantial breakfast of beef-steaks and porter, tea, eggs, muffins, prawns, and fried ham, held out as long as anybody—­indeed, at one time the odds were that he would not be sick at all; and he kept walking up and down deck like a true British tar.  In one of his turns he was observed to make a full stop.—­Immediately before the boiler his eye caught a cadaverous-looking countenance that rose between the top of a blue camlet cloak, and the bottom of a green travelling-cap, with a large patent-leather peak; he was certain that he knew it, and, somehow or other, he thought, not favourably.  The passenger was in that happy mood just debating whether he should hold out against sickness any longer, or resign himself unreservedly to its horrors, when Mr. Jorrocks’s eye encountered his, and the meeting did not appear to contribute to his happiness.  Mr. Jorrocks paused and looked at him steadily for some seconds, during which time his thoughts made a rapid cast over his memory.  “Sergeant Bumptious, by gum!” exclaimed he, giving his thigh a hearty slap, as the deeply indented pock-marks on the learned gentleman’s