Scarabocchio (excerpt from Chapter One)

We took the corvette from Naples and were nearly drowned. We sailed directly into the heart of a storm, sea and sky were one black and sickening whirlpool. I lay in the bunk shivering with nausea and fear, watching the rats run back and forth across the tilting walls. The water came in and I tasted the dark salt wine of the mythopoëic sea. I shut my eyes tight and was once again an Unborn, rocked in swirling waters, dreaming the pure nameless passions of infancy. When the sky cleared and the dripping sails were unfurled like the white wings of waterbirds shaking off sleep and I staggered on deck to see the sky blue once again in all its cloudless innocence I was almost sorry to be alive, my head stuffed with thousands and millions of names, names for all things as well as their Latin equivalents. I would have liked to linger in that salty twilight a little longer, perhaps passing imperceptibly over into death. I leaned upon the railing and wept, I was angry as a thwarted child, when Danzig appeared, smiling, his shirt open at the throat, his dark hair ruffled by the stiff sea wind - he was altogether poetical in his dishevellment and good humour, and I forgot my sorrow and embraced him heartily.
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You can read the whole of 'Scarabocchio' here.