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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: monkey with one of the cables - keeping his mind on Port Elizabeth.
The riggers had all the cable ranged on deck to clean lockers. The
new mate watches them go ashore - dinner hour - and sends the ship-
keeper out of the ship to fetch him a bottle of beer. Then he goes
to work whittling away the forelock of the forty-five-fathom
shackle-pin, gives it a tap or two with a hammer just to make it
loose, and of course that cable wasn't safe any more. Riggers come
back - you know what riggers are: come day, go day, and God send
Sunday. Down goes the chain into the locker without their foreman
looking at the shackles at all. What does he care? He ain't going
in the ship. And two days later the ship goes to sea. . . "
Within the Tides |
