annoyance. Then the voice of my mate reached me howling expostulations
to somebody at a distance. Other voices joined, apparently indignant;
a chorus of something that sounded like abuse replied. Now and then the
steam-whistle screeched.

Altogether that unnecessary uproar was distracting, but down there in my
cabin I took it calmly. In another moment, I thought, I should be going
down that wretched river, and in another week at the most I should be
totally quit of the odious place and all the odious people in it.

Greatly cheered by the idea, I seized the hair-brushes and looking at
myself in the glass began to use them. Suddenly a hush fell upon the
noise outside, and I heard (the ports of my cabin were thrown open)--I
heard a deep calm voice, not on board my ship, however, hailing
resolutely in English, but with a strong foreign twang, "Go ahead!"

There may be tides in the affairs of men which taken at the flood . . .
and so on. Personally I am still on the look out for that important
turn. I am, however, afraid that most of us are fated to flounder for
ever in the dead water of a pool whose shores are arid indeed. But
I know that there are often in men's affairs unexpectedly--even
irrationally--illuminating moments when an otherwise insignificant
sound, perhaps only some perfectly commonplace gesture, suffices
to reveal to us all the unreason, all the fatuous unreason, of our
complacency. "Go ahead" are not particularly striking words even when
pronounced with a foreign accent; yet they petrified me in the very
act of smiling at myself in the glass. And then, refusing to believe my
ears, but already boiling with indignation, I ran out of the cabin and
up on deck.