In the
second starboard berth was a small table, and on the floor a thick
round ink-pot, whose continual rolling on its side made me look down;
and there I saw a flat square book with black covers, which curved
half-open of itself, for it had been wet and stained. This I took, and
went back to the _Speranza_: for that ship was nothing but an emptiness,
and a stench of the crude elements of life, nearly assimilated now to
the rank deep to which she was wedded, and soon to be absorbed into its
nature and being, to become a sea in little, as I, in time, my God,
shall be nothing but an earth in little.
During dinner, and after, I read the book, with some difficulty, for it
was pen-written in French, and discoloured, and it turned out to be the
journal of someone, a passenger and voyager, I imagine, who called
himself Albert Tissu, and the ship the _Marie Meyer_. There was nothing
remarkable in the narrative that I could see--common-place descriptions
of South Sea scenes, records of weather, cargoes, and the like--till I
came to the last written page: and that was remarkable enough.
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