Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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Of the long days that followed before we finally cleared those sultry shores, days of anxiety and nights of constant care, much could be told did space permit. One by one the haggard, quinine-saturated invalids resumed their watch, wistfully seeking to help, but so weak that their faltering steps failed them oftentimes. But gradually they gathered strength, until by the time that Zanzibar had faded below the blue horizon every one mustered at watch—changing, and our little company remained complete.

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Something, doubtless, akin to the contact of the naked soul with its God is the feeling of conscious nothingness that enwraps a man who finds himself alone in some tiny craft upon the unbroken circle of the sea. Even more so, perhaps, when he has a vessel under his feet, than when he survives upon some frail fabric of hastily gathered flotsam, the lost company of his fellows. For in the former case he has leisure for calm thought, need for skill and energy; none of which qualities will avail him much in the latter, where it is but a question of a little more or less firm hold upon fleeting life. To this conclusion I am led from experience of both situations, about the former of which I would fain speak now.