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: guardacosta?"
The perpetual suggestion of a smile under Dominic's piratical
moustaches seemed to become more accentuated - quite real, grim,
actually almost visible through the wet and uncurled hair. Judging
by that symptom, he must have been in a towering rage. But I could
also see that he was puzzled, and that discovery affected me
disagreeably. Dominic puzzled! For a long time, leaning against
the bulwark, I gazed over the stern at the gray column that seemed
to stand swaying slightly in our wake always at the same distance.
Meanwhile Dominic, black and cowled, sat cross-legged on the deck,
with his back to the wind, recalling vaguely an Arab chief in his
 The Mirror of the Sea |