The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3Poe, Edgar Allan
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The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3
Poe, Edgar Allan
American fiction -- 19th century; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales, American
The schooner sailed from Liverpool on the tenth of July, crossed
the Tropic of Cancer on the twenty-fifth, in longitude twenty
degrees west, and reached Sal, one of the Cape Verd islands, on
the twenty-ninth, where she took in salt and other necessaries
for the voyage. On the third of August, she left the Cape Verds
and steered southwest, stretching over toward the coast of
Brazil, so as to cross the equator between the meridians of
twenty-eight and thirty degrees west longitude. This is the
course usually taken by vessels bound from Europe to the Cape of
Good Hope, or by that route to the East Indies. By proceeding
thus they avoid the calms and strong contrary currents which
continually prevail on the coast of Guinea, while, in the end, it
is found to be the shortest track, as westerly winds are never
wanting afterward by which to reach the Cape. It was Captain
Guy’s intention to make his first stoppage at Kerguelen’s Land—I
hardly know for what reason. On the day we were picked up the
schooner was off Cape St. Roque, in longitude thirty-one degrees
west; so that, when found, we had drifted probably, from north to
south, _not less than five-and-twenty degrees!_
On board the Jane Guy we were treated with all the kindness our
distressed situation demanded. In about a fortnight, during which
time we continued steering to the southeast, with gentle breezes
and fine weather, both Peters and myself recovered entirely from
the effects of our late privation and dreadful sufferings, and we
began to remember what had passed rather as a frightful dream
from which we had been happily awakened, than as events which had
taken place in sober and naked reality. I have since found that
this species of partial oblivion is usually brought about by
sudden transition, whether from joy to sorrow or from sorrow to
joy—the degree of forgetfulness being proportioned to the degree
of difference in the exchange. Thus, in my own case, I now feel
it impossible to realize the full extent of the misery which I
endured during the days spent upon the hulk. The incidents are
remembered, but not the feelings which the incidents elicited at
the time of their occurrence. I only know, that when they did
occur, I then thought human nature could sustain nothing more of
agony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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