`` we might invite him to come aloft also , '' temeraire said , a notion which laurence privately could not very much imagine that gentleman appreciating : hammond spoke rather dismally of churki , whose affections had evidently been bestowed upon a very unwilling subject , and he was regularly to be found chewing enormous wads of coca leaves , which he evidently considered a sovereign remedy for sea-sickness , even when the swell was not above ten feet .