)
"I once read a novel called _One Traveller Returns_. That's all I
remember of it--the title.
"Well, I am that traveller: and if ever I write down the story of the
_Eurotas_, and in particular of what was suffered on board her boat
No. 2, I have no doubt that nine readers out of ten will forget the
details just as soon and just as completely. There is a horrible
sameness about these narratives, Roddy; and the truer they are (as
I've proved) the nearer they resemble one another. Monotonous they
are--these drawn-out agonies--as the sea itself upon which they are
enacted. From time to time you sit up half-awake out of your stupor,
and then you know that something is going to happen, and also that it
is something you've read about somewhere, something that you've
_lived_ through (or so it seems) in dreams, or in a previous
existence. You hardly know which; and you don't care, much.
It's going to be horrible, you know: it's going to be all the more
horrible, in its way, for being conventional. You want to get it
over and pass on to the next stereotyped nightmare.
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