Go now, and though your present emotion accords duly with
the part I have assigned you, see that you do not play false to it
hereafter by letting this woful event impress you with too deep or too
lasting a sorrow."
Then to my Ideal, so strangely found and lost, I looked and murmured
an adieu, and returned among my companions, reverenced as one who had
been in a hallowed place.
It was the third evening after this, to me, memorable visit. Streaks
of sable, with golden edges, barred the face of the setting sun, and
promised to our hopes a change of weather. But this indication,
important as it was after the long calm, was evidently not that which
the whole ship's crew, officers and men, were now discussing,--as the
converged attention of the scattered groups on the closed entrance of
that silent, mysterious cabin testified.
"I know," said O'Hanlon, answering to an objection from some one in
the group where he stood, "it would be like invading a sanctuary to
intrude there; but the conviction sometimes comes over me that we have,
all hands of us, from the captain down, acted in regard to this matter
with the incapacity of men in a nightmare.
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