A great rendition of a brilliant Writer

If psyche be the totality of the conscious and unconscious mind then this novella finds aspects that are rarely explored but reside deep within. It fuses, in magnificent prose, inner and outer chaos and the futility of the conscious in dealing with it. We are '... given a glimpse of immeasurable strength and of immoderate wrath, the wrath that passes exhausted but never appeased—the wrath and fury of the passionate sea.'

The ship is a microcosm of rationality in an irrational sea. 'There was hate in the way she was handled, and a ferocity in the blows that fell.'

It demonstrates inevitable subservience of the human spirit to this chaos, both internal and external, despite the misguided belief that it can be controlled. '... there is a bodily fatigue in the mere holding on to existence within the excessive tumult; a searching and insidious fatigue that penetrates deep into a man's breast to cast down and sadden his heart, which is incorrigible, and of all the gifts of the earth—even before life itself—aspires to peace. '

Beautifully narrated, this is a fine audiobook by a great storyteller. One finishes with a humble sense of humanity, frail though that may be.

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