I struck my head, and, as I rolled
downward, swooned. When I came to myself, I was lying on the very bottom
step, which is thinly washed by the wine-waves: another roll and I
suppose I must have drowned. I sat there an hour, lost in amazement,
then crossed the causeway, came down to the _Speransa_ with the motor,
went through her, spent the day in work, slept on her, worked again
to-day, till four, at both ship and time-fuses (I with only 700 fuses
left, and in Stamboul alone must be 8,000 houses, without counting
Galata, Tophana, Kassim-pacha, Scutari, and the rest), started out at
5.30, and am now at 11 P.M. lying motionless two miles off the north
coast of the island of Marmora, with moonlight gloating on the water, a
faint north breeze, and the little pale land looking immensely
stretched-out, solemn and great, as if that were the world, and there
were nothing else; and the tiny island at its end immense, and the
_Speranza_ vast, and I only little. To-morrow at 11 A.M. I will moor the
_Speranza_ in the Golden Horn at the spot where there is that low damp
nook of the bagnio behind the naval magazines and that hill where the
palace of the Capitan Pacha is.
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