Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
During these days a feeling of awe crept over me. My memory
worked with startling power. The ominous, the insignificant, the great,
the small, the wonderful, the commonplace - all appeared before my
mental vision in magical succession. Pages of my history were recalled
which had been so long forgotten that they seemed to belong to a
previous existence. I heard all the voices of the past laughing, crying,
telling what I had heard them tell in many corners of the earth.
The loneliness of my state wore off when the gale was high and
I found much work to do. When fine weather returned, then came the
sense of solitude, which I could not shake off. I used my voice often, at
first giving some order about the affairs of a ship, for I had been told
that from disuse I should lose my speech. At the meridian altitude of
the sun I called aloud, 'Eight bells,' after the custom on a ship at sea.
Again from my cabin I cried to an imaginary man at the helm, 'How
does she head, there?' and again, 'Is she on her course?' But getting
no reply, I was reminded the more palpably of my condition. My voice
sounded hollow on the empty air, and I dropped the practice. However,
it was not long before the thought came to me that when I was a lad
I used to sing; why not try that now, where it would disturb no one?. .
. You should have seen the porpoises leap when I pitched my voice for
the waves and the sea and all that was in it. Old turtles, with large eyes,
poked their heads up out of the sea as I sang 'Johnny Boker', and 'We'll
Pay Darby Doyl for his Boots', and the like. But the porpoises were, on
the whole, vastly more appreciative than the turtles.
9
A few days later Slocum was suffering from hallucinations - or
was he? He had partaken rather too freely of plums and cheese and,
as a result, was smitten with the most violent indigestion. Then, just
when he was at his lowest ebb with exhaustion and pain, the
Spray
ran into a storm. Slocum should have taken in sail and laid to but he
was too weary. Instead, he went below and collapsed on the cabin
floor. The sloop was left to run wild before the wind, out of control:
