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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: ounce of advantage of a fair wind." But there was also a
psychological motive that made him extremely difficult to deal with
on board that iron clipper. He had just come out of the marvellous
Tweed, a ship, I have heard, heavy to look at but of phenomenal
speed. In the middle sixties she had beaten by a day and a half
the steam mail-boat from Hong Kong to Singapore. There was
something peculiarly lucky, perhaps, in the placing of her masts -
who knows? Officers of men-of-war used to come on board to take
the exact dimensions of her sail-plan. Perhaps there had been a
touch of genius or the finger of good fortune in the fashioning of
her lines at bow and stern. It is impossible to say. She was
The Mirror of the Sea |
