| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: hours the light awoke him, and he found Kurt staggering about in
search of something. He found it at last in the locker, and held
it in his hand unsteadily--a compass. Then he compared his map.
"We've changed our direction," he said, "and come into the wind.
I can't make it out. We've turned away from New York to the
south. Almost as if we were going to take a hand--"
He continued talking to himself for some time.
Day came, wet and windy. The window was bedewed externally, and
they could see nothing through it. It was also very cold, and
Bert decided to keep rolled up in his blankets on the locker
until the bugle summoned him to his morning ration. That
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: expeditions, shrank from that act of savage energy, and began,
instead, to hunt for excuses.
No! It was not for him to run away like an incurable who cuts his
throat. He finished dressing and looked at his own impassive face
in the saloon mirror scornfully. While being pulled on shore in
the gig, he remembered suddenly the wild beauty of a waterfall seen
when hardly more than a boy, years ago, in Menado. There was a
legend of a governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, on official
tour, committing suicide on that spot by leaping into the chasm.
It was supposed that a painful disease had made him weary of life.
But was there ever a visitation like his own, at the same time
Within the Tides |
