It's my experience they always have. It is the sea that gives
it--the vastness, the loneliness surrounding their dark stolid souls.
Ah! Well! we stumbled, we crept, we fell, we barked our shins on the
wreckage, we hauled. The masts stood, but we did not know how much they
might be charred down below. It was nearly calm, but a long swell ran
from the west and made her roll. They might go at any moment. We looked
at them with apprehension. One could not foresee which way they would
fall.
"Then we retreated aft and looked about us. The deck was a tangle of
planks on edge, of planks on end, of splinters, of ruined woodwork. The
masts rose from that chaos like big trees above a matted undergrowth.
The interstices of that mass of wreckage were full of something whitish,
sluggish, stirring--of something that was like a greasy fog. The
smoke of the invisible fire was coming up again, was trailing, like a
poisonous thick mist in some valley choked with dead wood. Already lazy
wisps were beginning to curl upwards amongst the mass of splinters. Here
and there a piece of timber, stuck upright, resembled a post. Half of a
fife-rail had been shot through the foresail, and the sky made a patch
of glorious blue in the ignobly soiled canvas. A portion of several
boards holding together had fallen across the rail, and one end
protruded overboard, like a gangway leading upon nothing, like a gangway
leading over the deep sea, leading to death--as if inviting us to walk
the plank at once and be done with our ridiculous troubles.
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