IN no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty,even from the most simple data. It might be supposed that a catastrophe such as I have justrelated would have effectually cooled my incipient passion for the sea. On the contrary, Inever experienced a more ardent longing for the wild adventures incident to the life of anavigator than within a week after our miraculous deliverance. This short period provedamply long enough to erase from my memory the shadows, and bring out in vivid light allthe pleasurably exciting points of color, all the picturesqueness, of the late perilousaccident. My conversations with Augustus grew daily more frequent and more intenselyfull of interest. He had a manner of relating his stories of the ocean (more than one half ofwhich I now suspect to have been sheer fabrications) well adapted to have weight with oneof my enthusiastic temperament and somewhat gloomy although glowing imagination. It isstrange, too, that he most strongly enlisted my feelings in behalf of the life of a seaman,when he depicted his more terrible moments of suffering and despair. For the bright side ofthe painting I had a limited sympathy. My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of deathor captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, uponsome gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown. Such visions ordesires-for they amounted to desires-are common, I have since been assured, to thewhole numerous race of the melancholy among men-at the time of which I speak Iregarded them only as prophetic glimpses of a destiny which I felt myself in a measurebound to fulfil. Augustus thoroughly entered into my state of mind. It is probable, indeed,that our intimate communion had resulted in a partial interchange of character.
