parture would free them from the expense of supporting me.
They returned indistinct and repulsive answers to all the questions I
asked, and appeared anxious to avoid having the least communication
with me. During the greater part of the forenoon, they employed
themselves in trimming the lamps and cleaning the reflectors, but
never conversed any. I easily perceived that a mutual animosity
existed between them, but was unable to discover the cause of it.
Morvalden seemed to fear Angerstoff, and at the same time to feel a
deep resentment towards him, which he did not dare to express.
Angerstoff apparently was aware of this, for he behaved to his
companion with the undisguised fierceness of determined hate, and
openly thwarted him in everything.
Marietta, the female on board, was the wife of Morvalden. She remained
chiefly below decks, and attended to the domestic concerns of the
vessel. She was rather good-looking, but so reserved and forbidding in
her manners that she formed no desirable acquisition to our party,
already so heartless and unsociable in its character.
When night approached, after the lapse of a wearisome and monotonous
day, I went on deck to see the beacon lighted, and continued walking
backwards and forwards till a late hour. I watched the lantern, as it
swung from side to side, and flashed upon different portions of the
sea alternately, and sometimes fancied I saw men struggling among the
billows that tumbled around, and at other times imagined I could
discern the white sail of an approaching vessel. Human voices seemed
to mingle with the noise of the bursting waves, and I often listened
intently, almost in the expectation of hearing articulate sounds. My
mind grew sombre as the scene itself, and strange and fearful ideas
obtruded themselves in rapid succession. It was dreadful to be chained
in the middle of the deep--to be the continual sport of the quietless
billows--to be shunned as a fatal thing by those who traversed the
solitary ocean. Though within sight of the shore, our situation was
more dreary than if we had been sailing a thousand miles from it. We
felt not the pleasure of moving forwards, nor the hope of reaching
port, nor the delights arising from favourable breezes and genial
weather. When a billow drove us to one side, we were tossed back again
by another; our imprisonment had no variety or definite termination;
and the calm and the tempest were alike uninteresting to us. I felt as
if
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