Okay then, it’s not so bad as all that. The sailing goes on, and on, and it could be worse – sure, things have been strange for some time now, as you feel gripped by this passion and that, only to see each fade and husk; and there are, as ever, so many questions you’re quite uncertain about – missions, motives, however you ended up here –

But look around! The open seas! The brisk air! The hale brace of a bodily-lived life! These days!

Enjoy it while you can, enjoy it now: the warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, they are as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up—flaked with rose-water snow. And the starred and stately nights seem haughty dames in jeweled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! Those nights—how to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights! You’ll lose it all eventually, it will have been erased, rolled up like a scroll and put away somewhere. And then you’ll want to touch it with your mind, your fingers. But where is it?

The contents of the cabin seem to glow in the dark evenings’ calm, the contents flicker in your mind, beckoning. Inward the days turn upon the soul, especially in the still mild hours; but in the darkness, desire shoots her crystals into you.

Sail on, sailor.