I sometimes like high seasoning, I didn't like this. But I suppose my state of mind affected my appetite.
A special sort of wine was served Valerie, which seemed to do her good. She had almost to be carried to the table, and seemed half fainting when she got there; but after having some of that wine she rallied tremendously.
At our table were Gibbs and Lisa, Valerie and myself, and our host and captain, who calls himself Le Noir. The name suits him only too well; in fact he resembles the Black One of legend, or in other words the Devil himself. He is swarthy, and his heavy brows meet in a V. His skull is long and narrow, and I don't like his looks. Valerie (sweet girl!) has already managed to tell me that I dislike him because I am afraid he knows more than I do. I told her truthfully that I am sure he does, and that I imagine some of his knowledge to be of a kind no decent man would want. Yet perhaps that was rather a foolish remark. I know nothing against Le Noir. He saved us, I suppose; that is, he took us off the rock.
But I wish I knew where he is taking us. He has made no promise as to port; we asked him if he was bound for any port in North or South America; we would have gone down on our knees in gratitude had he mentioned San Francisco. Instead, he said he was on a longish trip which was off the steamer routes.
Except for the fact that water is churning under our keel, I could imagine our course lay off the earth altogether. That sounds like an insane statement, but let me set down the facts. They are insane—the facts. Or say, indeed, that the very skies above us and waters beneath are all crazy and impossible.
But the facts:
It is by my watch nine o'clock of an August morning. And I haven’t skipped twelve hours or anything like that. Gibbs was awake while I took a short nap, and he assures me that it was a short one—of perhaps two hours' duration only. Well! . . .
Later
WELL, to bring this up to the present moment again; Let me try to describe the indescribable.
I walk to the nearest port, which is heavily glassed. (There are no decks on this little ship; we walked into it as into a submarine; once in we are in, and sealed away, it seems, from both outer air and freedom.)
I look out—up, down; a little forward, and a little back toward our wake. And what I see is not so very strange; just natural enough, yet unnatural enough, to make me doubt my sanity. I know in the first place that it ought to be—by this time—nearly ten in the morning; but above I see stars, and in the water that streams darkly and vaguely back I see stars once more. That in itself is not as I have ever seen it; as a ship rushes through ocean water, throwing it aside in ripples and furrows in even the calmest sea, it is impossible to see reflections of stars; yet they are there beneath us, nor are these reflections as broken as you would suppose. They are dim and faint, and the water seems to flow over them—indeed, it is as though those reflections were other stars which shone upward from beneath the water over which we travel.
The stars above us, on the contrary, are large and clear and burning beyond anything I should have thought possible even in the tropics. They quiver and sparkle a little—a very little indeed; otherwise every star would have the appearance of a planet, so large and near they are. The nebulas are so brilliantly clear that to follow their convolutions gives me a feeling of dizzy sickness, as though I were too
