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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: westerly weather go for nothing, and that it is infinitely more
likely to veer right round to the east than to shift back again.
It was in those conditions that, at seven on the morning of the
21st, the signal for the fleet to bear up and steer east was made.
Holding a clear recollection of these languid easterly sighs
rippling unexpectedly against the run of the smooth swell, with no
other warning than a ten-minutes' calm and a queer darkening of the
coast-line, I cannot think, without a gasp of professional awe, of
that fateful moment. Perhaps personal experience, at a time of
life when responsibility had a special freshness and importance,
has induced me to exaggerate to myself the danger of the weather.
The Mirror of the Sea |
