which wind and current invariably leave on their course. Within the
ship, all was clear as though I were looking into a child's toy-house;
but a toy-house wrought of glass. Every nook and cranny was laid bare;
and the details, even when they did not interest me, sank into my mind.
I could evermore, by closing my eyes, have seen again anything on which
in those moments of spiritual vision the eyes of my soul had rested.
All the time there was to me a dual consciousness. Whatever I saw before
me was all plain and real; and yet I never lost for a moment the sense
of my own identity. I knew I was on shore amid the rocks under the
cliff, and that Gormala's dead body was beside me as I knelt. But there
was some divine guiding principle which directed my thought--it must
have been my thought, for my eyes followed as my wishes led, as though
my whole being went too. They were guided from the very bow of the ship
along the deck, and down the after hatchway. I went down, step by step,
making accurate and careful scrutiny of all things around me. I passed
into the narrow cabin, which seemed even to me to smell evilly. The rank
yellow light from the crude oil lamp with thick smoky wick made the
gloom seem a reality, and the shadows as monstrous. From this I passed
aft into a tiny cabin, where on a bunk lay Marjory asleep. She looked
pale and wan; it made my heart sick to see the great black circles round
her eyes. But there was resolution in her mouth and nostrils; resolution
fixed and untameable. Knowing her as I did, and with her message "I can
die" burned into my heart, it did not need any guessing to know what was
in the hand clenched inside the breast of her dress. The cabin door was
locked; on the outside was a rough bolt, newly placed; the key was not
in the lock. I would have lingered, for the lightning-like glimpse made
me hungry for more; but the same compelling force moved me on. In the
next cabin lay a man, also asleep. He was large of frame, with a rugged
red beard streaked with grey; what hair remained on his head, which was
all scarred with cicatrices, was a dull red turning white. On a rack
above him, under the chronometer--which marked Greenwich time as
2.15,--ready to his hand, were two great seven shooters; from his pocket
peeped the hilt of a bowie knife. It was indeed strange to me that
I could look without passion or vindictiveness on such a person so
disposed. I suppose it was the impersonal spirit within me which was at
the moment receptive, and that all human passion, being ultimately of
the flesh, was latent. At the time, though I was conscious of it, it did
not strike me as strange; no more strange than that I could see far and
near at the same glance, and take in great space and an impossible
wilderness of detail. No more strange, than that all things were for me
resolved into their elements; that fog ceased to deaden or darkness
to hide; that timber and iron, deck and panel and partition, beam and
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