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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: The south-westerly weather is the thick weather PAR EXCELLENCE. It
is not the thickness of the fog; it is rather a contraction of the
horizon, a mysterious veiling of the shores with clouds that seem
to make a low-vaulted dungeon around the running ship. It is not
blindness; it is a shortening of the sight. The West Wind does not
say to the seaman, "You shall be blind"; it restricts merely the
range of his vision and raises the dread of land within his breast.
It makes of him a man robbed of half his force, of half his
efficiency. Many times in my life, standing in long sea-boots and
streaming oilskins at the elbow of my commander on the poop of a
homeward-bound ship making for the Channel, and gazing ahead into
The Mirror of the Sea |
