‘Sometimes,’ he thought at such moments, ‘in my distant voyages, when I was still a man – and when that man, free and powerful, gave orders to others that they carried out – I used to see the sky open, the sea tremble and groan, a storm brewing in some part of the sky and thrashing the horizon with its wings like a giant eagle; then I would feel that my vessel was nothing but a useless refuge, itself shaking and shuddering, as light as a feather in the hand of a giant. Soon the appearance of some sharp rocks and the awful thundering of the waves against them spoke to me of death, and death
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