“By the way, do you know the meanest trick you can play on someone’s mind? It’s to overwhelm it with wonders. You have to do what we did to one of our shipmates on our way home from the Bahamas. We were sailing along with pennants flying and the holds full. The ship was like one big sofa: There was nothing left to do but eat, drink, sleep, sing . . . and take it easy. This mate of ours—I think it was all the lazing about that got him stirred up—he goes and starts recalling that he was a doctor of something or other, I can’t remember what; or that he’d had a mate who was a doctor; or that he himself had served as a footman at a college of doctors; or something along those lines. In any case, there he was doctoring us, redoctoring us, and indoctrinating us.

“And, once again, it was a Negro who did the trick. He brought him one of those gorgeous, repulsive creatures you can haul out of the sea—as many as you like, if that’s what you happen to be interested in: one of the most beautiful and, at the same time, one of the most repulsive things in the world. Picture something soft, moist, transparent, formless . . . and in the middle of all this formlessness, two eyes: two very beautiful eyes, completely human, with lids, with long, soft lashes, beautiful, golden irises, and beautiful whites—a little bluish, like aristocrats have, eyes like fathers sometimes have, eyes with a reproachful look, one that says, ‘Now then, boy, is this how you squander your time?’ Well, the Negro slapped this thing right onto the knees of the other man (who was sitting at the foot of the mainmast) and then he walked away, upright, bracing himself, because we were heading into a bit of a fresh breeze. He walked away with determination, as though the matter was settled. And the matter was settled. The other sailor looked at those beautiful eyes, which were, believe me, like a poet’s eyes, but a gigantic poet’s eyes (the creature had been hauled up from a depth of who knows how many fathoms). I’m telling you, he looked at those ever so beautiful eyes, floating in their mass of jelly, and after that, he shut his trap for the rest of the voyage. Mysteries are mysteries.