|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: no lifebuoy, no piece of boat or branded oar - to give a hint of
the place and date of her sudden end. The SHIPPING GAZETTE does
not even call her "lost with all hands." She remains simply
"missing"; she has disappeared enigmatically into a mystery of fate
as big as the world, where your imagination of a brother-sailor, of
a fellow-servant and lover of ships, may range unchecked.
And yet sometimes one gets a hint of what the last scene may be
like in the life of a ship and her crew, which resembles a drama in
its struggle against a great force bearing it up, formless,
ungraspable, chaotic and mysterious, as fate.
It was on a gray afternoon in the lull of a three days' gale that
The Mirror of the Sea |
