You Were Tempted To Wonder, As
You Looked, How So Thin A Glimmer Could Control And Disperse Such
Solid Blackness.
When Jones and I entered we found a little
company of our acquaintances seated together at the triangular
foremost table.
A more forlorn party, in more dismal
circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The motion here in the
ship's nose was very violent; the uproar of the sea often
overpoweringly loud. The yellow flicker of the lantern spun round
and round and tossed the shadows in masses. The air was hot, but
it struck a chill from its foetor.
From all round in the dark bunks, the scarcely human noises of the
sick joined into a kind of farmyard chorus. In the midst, these
five friends of mine were keeping up what heart they could in
company. Singing was their refuge from discomfortable thoughts and
sensations. One piped, in feeble tones, 'Oh why left I my hame?'
which seemed a pertinent question in the circumstances. Another,
from the invisible horrors of a pen where he lay dog-sick upon the
upper-shelf, found courage, in a blink of his sufferings, to give
us several verses of the 'Death of Nelson'; and it was odd and
eerie to hear the chorus breathe feebly from all sorts of dark
corners, and 'this day has done his dooty' rise and fall and be
taken up again in this dim inferno, to an accompaniment of
plunging, hollow-sounding bows and the rattling spray-showers
overhead.
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