out solitary and
alone on a sort of hazy sea, which I had represented by drawing two or
three straight lines, and in the distance one could see the outline of a
gloomy shore. The thin paper, a leaf torn from a book, had print on the
reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave
the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing,
with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely
transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me
a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the
pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like
the pale surface of the sea. I was terrified at my own work; I was
astonished to find in it those things that I had not put there; to
discover in it those things which elsewhere had given me such a well
remembered anguish.

"Oh!" I said with exaltation to my young companion, who did not
understand anything of what was going forward, "Oh!" I exclaimed with a
voice full of emotion, "you may see it; I cannot bear to look at it!" I
covered the picture with my hands, but nevertheless I peeped at it very
often; and it was so vividly impressed upon my mind that I can still
recall it as it appeared to me transfigured: a gleam of light lay upon
the horizon of that sea so awkwardly represented, the heavens appeared
to be filled with rain, and it seemed to be a dreary winter evening in
which there was a fierce wind blowing.

The "Unhappy Duck" solitary, far away from his family and friends was
making his way toward the foggy shore over which there hung an air of
extreme sadness and desolation. And certainly for one fleeting moment
I had a prescience of those heartaches that I was to know later in
the course of my sailor life. I seemed to have a presentiment of those
stormy December evenings when my boat was to enter, to take shelter
until the morning, one of those uninhabited bays upon the coast of
Brittany; more particularly I had a prescience of those twilights of the
Antarctic winter when, in about the latitude of Magellan, we were to
go in search of protection towards those sterile shores that are as
inhospitable and as absolutely deserted as the waters surrounding them.

The vision faded and I once more found myself in my grandmother's
large room enveloped in the shadows of the evening. My grandmother was
singing, and I was again a tiny being who had seen nothing of the larg