Отрывок из книги
George Payson
Published by Good Press, 2021
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It was a cold grey day; the deck of the Leucothea was sloppy with melting snow, and littered with chaotic little piles of luggage, among which the passengers wandered up and down like a hundred cats smelling about in a strange garret. Some were still crouched, shiveringly, on the high piles of lumber amid ships, to which they had ascended to take their last view of home; others jostled in the gangways, as they revolved in their uneasy orbits from stem to stern; while a third party, without any ostensible motive, kept running up and down the cabin-stairs. Everybody looked cross and out of sorts, as if he would like nothing so well as to get into a quarrel with everybody else.
After proceeding a few miles down the bay, we put back and anchored, for the night, just out of sight of the city; and the deck being now almost entirely deserted, I groped my way down the winding stairs and into the little cabin. At first, I could see nothing but the misty light of a lantern swinging amidships, faintly illuminating the white-washed beams, and oil-cloth covered table; but, as my eyes became used to the darkness, I discovered a small party gathered round the unsocial airtight, and conversing in a sort of subterranean tones, of their present dismal condition. Sitting down among them, I was not so much occupied with my own bitter and thick-coming fancies, as to take no note of their broken dialogue.
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