Splashing and ducking have commenced freely. The waves do the splashing, and the people on board do the ducking.
There are those who look ill and keep well; and others who look well at first, but who turn all sorts of colours within a quarter of an hour, struggle gallantly, and succumb; children lively, but gradually collapsing, lying about doubled up helplessly; comfortable, comely matrons who came on board neat and tidy, now horridly uncomfortable, and quite reckless of appearance. Here, too, is the uncertain sailor, who considers it safer to remain seated, and who, at the end of the voyage, is surprised to find himself in perfect health.
_Sighting Ventnor_.--The man "who knows everything" informs us that this is Bonchurch, which information a man with a book has of course felt himself bound to correct. The latter tells us that it is a place called Undercliff (which nobody for one moment believes), and both informants are put right by a mariner with a map, who points out all the places correctly, and confides to us in a husky voice that "that ere place among the trees is Ventnor."
More shower-bathing; the fore-part of the vessel quite cleared by the attacking waves.
However, "it soon dries off," says a jolly middle-aged gentleman in a summer suit, drenched from tip of collar to toe of boot.
Being well out at sea (how many are never "_well_ out at sea"!), we catch sight of Bonchurch and the landslip. Of course we gay nautical dogs pity the poor lubbers ashore who "live at home at ease," and who are probably suffering from intense---- (Here my remarks, made to a jovial companion on a camp-stool, are interrupted by a blob in the eye from a wave. On recovery I forget what I was going to say, but fancy "the missing word" is "heat.")
Passing Sandown. Of course the well-informed person says, "This is where the races are," and equally of course he is immediately contradicted by a reduced chorus of bystanders, who pity his deplorable ignorance. Total discomfiture of well-informed person. He disappears. "Gone below," like a Demon in a pantomime at the appearance of the Good Fairy.
Nice place Sandown apparently, where, it being 1.30, the happy Wight-islanders are probably sitting down in comfort to a nice hot lunch, while we, the jovial mariners--well, no matter. I shall wait till I can lunch ashore.