my narrow rocking bed, as it might be in my coffin; a trust in my
Maker's will to save me if that were for the best, a trust in His
final wisdom and loving-kindness, even though this night should be
my last on earth. For myself I was resigned, and for others I must
trust Him no less. Who was I to constitute myself the protector of
the helpless, when He was in His Heaven? Such was my sunset mood;
it lasted a few minutes, and then, without radically changing, it
became more objective.

The west was a broadening blaze of yellow and purple and red. I
cannot describe it to you. If you have seen the sun set in the
tropics, you would despise my description; and, if not, I for one
could never make you see it. Suffice it that a petrel wheeled
somewhere between deepening carmine and paling blue, and it took
my thoughts off at an earthy tangent. I thanked God there were no
big sea-birds in these latitudes; no molly-hawks, no albatrosses,
no Cape-hens. I thought of an albatross that I had caught going
out. Its beak and talons were at the bottom with the charred
remains of the Lady Jermyn. But I could see them still, could feel
them shrewdly in my mind's flesh; and so to the old superstition,
strangely justified by my case; and so to the poem which I, with my
special experience, not unnaturally consider the greatest poem ever
penned.

But I did not know it then as I do now - and how the lines eluded
me! I seemed to see them in the book, yet I could not read the
words!

"Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink."