For myself, without claim, without merit,
simply by chance I had been allowed to look through the half-opened door
and I had seen the saddest possible desecration, the withered brightness
of youth, a spirit neither made cringing nor yet dulled but as if
bewildered in quivering hopelessness by gratuitous cruelty;
self-confidence destroyed and, instead, a resigned recklessness, a
mournful callousness (and all this simple, almost naive)--before the
material and moral difficulties of the situation. The passive anguish of
the luckless!
I asked myself: wasn't that ill-luck exhausted yet? Ill-luck which is
like the hate of invisible powers interpreted, made sensible and
injurious by the actions of men?
Mr. Powell as you may well imagine had opened his eyes at my statement.
But he was full of his recalled experiences on board the _Ferndale_, and
the strangeness of being mixed up in what went on aboard, simply because
his name was also the name of a shipping-master, kept him in a state of
wonder which made other coincidences, however unlikely, not so very
surprising after all.
Pages:
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480