"Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 of 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

much fatigued themselves to notice our jaded appearance- of course,
it would not have borne a very rigid scrutiny. Schoolboys, however,
can accomplish wonders in the way of deception, and I verily believe
not one of our friends in Nantucket had the slightest suspicion that
the terrible story told by some sailors in town of their having run
down a vessel at sea and drowned some thirty or forty poor devils,
had reference either to the Ariel, my companion, or myself. We two
have since very frequently talked the matter over- but never without
a shudder. In one of our conversations Augustus frankly confessed to
me, that in his whole life he had at no time experienced so
excruciating a sense of dismay, as when on board our little boat he
first discovered the extent of his intoxication, and felt himself
sinking beneath its influence.

~~~ End of Text of Chapter 1 ~~~

CHAPTER 2



IN no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce
inferences with entire certainty, even from the most simple data. It
might be supposed that a catastrophe such as I have just related
would have effectually cooled my incipient passion for the sea. On
the contrary, I never experienced a more ardent longing for the wild
adventures incident to the life of a navigator than within a week
after our miraculous deliverance. This short period proved amply long
enough to erase from my memory the shadows, and bring out in vivid
light all the pleasurably exciting points of color, all the
picturesqueness, of the late perilous accident. My conversations with
Augustus grew daily more frequent and more intensely full of
interest. He had a manner of relating his stories of the ocean (more
than one half of which I now suspect to have been sheer fabrications)
well adapted to have weight with one of my enthusiastic temperament
and somewhat gloomy although glowing imagination. It is strange, too,
that he most strongly enlisted my feelings in behalf of the life of a
seaman, when he depicted his more terrible moments of suffering and
despair. For the bright side of the painting I had a limited
sympathy. My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or
captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow
and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean
unapproachable and unknown. Such visions or desires- for they
amounted to desires- are common, I have since been assured, to the
whole numerous race of the melancholy among men- at the time of which
I speak I regarded them only as prophetic glimpses of a destiny which
I felt myself in a measure bound to fulfil. Augustus thoroughly
entered into my state of mind. It is probable, indeed, that our
intimate communion had resulted in a partial interchange of
character.