G
guest
Guest
A lot of pirates were niggers and irishmen, which is about the same thing. We suck.
Here ended the narrative, or what fragment of it Meech had brought
aboard. Ebenezer read it again, and a third time, hoping to find in it some-
thing to connect Henry Burlingame with his luckless namesake in the story.
But there was every indication that Captain Smith’s antagonist, who Henry
hoped would prove to be his ancestor, was not only childless but un-
married, and his future with the company of explorers was far from promis-
ing. With a sigh the Laureate assembled the pages of the Journal and con-
cealed it under his sailcloth bed, where no one was likely to find it. Then
he extinguished the lantern and sat for some while in the dark. The naked
sounds of rape, floating through the shallop’s foVsle, conjured pictures clear
enough to make him shiver. Together with the story in the manuscript
which was as much a revelation to him as it had been to Hicktopeake
they forced his reverie willy-nilly into a single channel, and before long he
found himself physically moved by desire. He could not in honesty assert
that his pity for the Cyprian girls was unambiguous, or his condemnation
of their assault wholehearted; if he had been shocked by the spectacle,
he had also been excited by it, and so fascinated that no lesser business
than that of the Journal could have summoned him away. Indeed, the
sight of the young girl trapped in the rigging like a fly in a web, and of
Boabdil climbing leisurely up to envelop her like a great black spider, had
aroused him as its memory aroused him now.
It was abundantly clear to him that the value of his virginity was not a
moral value, even as he had explained to Bertrand one day on the Poseidon.
But the mystic ontological value he had ascribed to it seemed less convincing
now than it had seemed then. The recollection of Joan Toast’s visit to his
room,, for example, which was customarily dominated by his speech at her
departure or the hymn to virginity composed afterwards, stopped now at
the memory of the girl herself, sitting pertly on his bed, and would go no
farther. She had leaned forward and embraced him where he knelt before
her: her breasts had brushed like cool silk on his forehead; his cheek had
lain against the cushion of her stomach; his eyes had lingered close to The
Mystery!
Here ended the narrative, or what fragment of it Meech had brought
aboard. Ebenezer read it again, and a third time, hoping to find in it some-
thing to connect Henry Burlingame with his luckless namesake in the story.
But there was every indication that Captain Smith’s antagonist, who Henry
hoped would prove to be his ancestor, was not only childless but un-
married, and his future with the company of explorers was far from promis-
ing. With a sigh the Laureate assembled the pages of the Journal and con-
cealed it under his sailcloth bed, where no one was likely to find it. Then
he extinguished the lantern and sat for some while in the dark. The naked
sounds of rape, floating through the shallop’s foVsle, conjured pictures clear
enough to make him shiver. Together with the story in the manuscript
which was as much a revelation to him as it had been to Hicktopeake
they forced his reverie willy-nilly into a single channel, and before long he
found himself physically moved by desire. He could not in honesty assert
that his pity for the Cyprian girls was unambiguous, or his condemnation
of their assault wholehearted; if he had been shocked by the spectacle,
he had also been excited by it, and so fascinated that no lesser business
than that of the Journal could have summoned him away. Indeed, the
sight of the young girl trapped in the rigging like a fly in a web, and of
Boabdil climbing leisurely up to envelop her like a great black spider, had
aroused him as its memory aroused him now.
It was abundantly clear to him that the value of his virginity was not a
moral value, even as he had explained to Bertrand one day on the Poseidon.
But the mystic ontological value he had ascribed to it seemed less convincing
now than it had seemed then. The recollection of Joan Toast’s visit to his
room,, for example, which was customarily dominated by his speech at her
departure or the hymn to virginity composed afterwards, stopped now at
the memory of the girl herself, sitting pertly on his bed, and would go no
farther. She had leaned forward and embraced him where he knelt before
her: her breasts had brushed like cool silk on his forehead; his cheek had
lain against the cushion of her stomach; his eyes had lingered close to The
Mystery!
