| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: the Spaniards, that there were but two courses open - either
to turn her back upon the enemy or sail through one of his
squadrons. The first alternative Greenville dismissed as
dishonourable to himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship.
Accordingly, he chose the latter, and steered into the Spanish
armament. Several vessels he forced to luff and fall under
his lee; until, about three o'clock of the afternoon, a great
ship of three decks of ordnance took the wind out of his
sails, and immediately boarded. Thence-forward, and all night
long, the REVENGE, held her own single-handed against the
Spaniards. As one ship was beaten off, another took its
|
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: When we first arrived we had been taken up with much ceremony
well toward the centre of the town, and, all the street corners
being placarded with the tricolor posters announcing the birth of
our company, the petit bourgeois with his wife and family made a
Sunday holiday from the inspection of the ship. I was always in
evidence in my best uniform to give information as though I had
been a Cook's tourists' interpreter, while our quartermasters
reaped a harvest of small change from personally conducted
parties. But when the move was made--that move which carried us
some mile and a half down the stream to be tied up to an
altogether muddier and shabbier quay--then indeed the desolation
 A Personal Record |