The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: secular experience of seamen as recorded in books,
nor with the aspect of the sky. Only purposeful
malevolence could account for it. It sent us
travelling at a great pace away from our proper
course; and if we had been out on pleasure sailing
bent it would have been a delightful breeze, with
the awakened sparkle of the sea, with the sense of
motion and a feeling of unwonted freshness. Then,
all at once, as if disdaining to carry farther the
sorry jest, it dropped and died out completely in
less than five minutes. The ship's head swung
 The Shadow Line |