myself to hint in any other way at the appalling magnitude of the
disaster. The whole world of Costaguana (the country, you may remember,
of my seaboard tale), men, women, headlands, houses, mountains, town,
campo (there was not a single brick, stone, or grain of sand of its
soil I had not placed in position with my own hands); all the history,
geography, politics, finance; the wealth of Charles Gould's silver-mine,
and the splendour of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, whose name,
cried out in the night (Dr. Monygham heard it pass over his head--in
Linda Viola's voice), dominated even after death the dark gulf
containing his conquests of treasure and love--all that had come down
crashing about my ears. I felt I could never pick up the pieces--and in
that very moment I was saying, "Won't you sit down?"

The sea is strong medicine. Behold what the quarter-deck training even
in a merchant ship will do! This episode should give you a new view of
the English and Scots seamen (a much-caricatured folk) who had the last
say in the formation of my character. One is nothing if not modest,
but in this disaster I think I have done some honour to their simple
teaching. "Won't you sit down?" Very fair; very fair indeed. She sat
down. Her amused glance strayed all over the room. There were pages of
MS. on the table and under the table, a batch of typed copy on a chair,
single leaves had fluttered away into distant corners; there were there
living pages, pages scored and wounded, dead pages that would be burnt
at the end of the day--the litter of a cruel battlefield, of a long,
long and desperate fray. Long! I suppose I went to bed sometimes, and
got up the same number of times. Yes, I suppose I slept, and ate the
food put before me, and talked connectedly to my household on suitable
occasions. But I had never been aware of the even flow of daily
life, made easy and noiseless for me by a silent, watchful, tireless
affection. Indeed, it seemed to me that I had been sitting at that table