Imagine--after three days of inky sea, and pitchy sky,
and Death's deep jaws snapping and barely missing--ten thousand great
slopes of emerald, aquamarine, amethyst and topaz, liquid, alive, and
dancing jocundly beneath a gorgeous sun: and you will have a faint idea
of what met the eyes and hearts of the rescued looking out of that
battered, jagged ship, upon ocean smiling back to smiling Heaven.
Yet one man felt no buoyancy, nor gush of joy. He leaned against a
fragment of the broken bulwark, confused between the sweetness of life
preserved and the bitterness of treasure lost--his wife's and children's
treasured treasure; benumbed at heart, and almost weary of the existence
he had battled for so stoutly. He looked so moody, and answered so grimly
and unlike himself, that they all held aloof from him; heavy heart among
so many joyful ones, he was in true solitude; the body in a crowd, the
soul alone. And he was sore as well as heavy; for of all the lubberly
acts he had ever known, the way he had lost his dear ones' fortune seemed
to him the worst.
A voice sounded in his ear: "Poor thing! she has s foundered.
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