"The Secret Sharer"
by Joseph Conrad

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     When I opened my eyes the second view started my heart with a thump. The black southern hill of Koh-ring seemed to hang right over the ship like a towering fragment of everlasting night. On that enormous mass of blackness there was not a gleam to be seen, not a sound to be heard. It was gliding irresistibly towards us and yet seemed already within reach of the hand. I saw the vague figures of the watch grouped in the waist, gazing in awed silence.

     "Are you going on, sir?" inquired an unsteady voice at my elbow.

     I ignored it. I had to go on.

 

     "Keep her full. Don't check her way. That won't do now," I said warningly.

     "I can't see the sails very well," the helmsman answered me, in strange, quavering tones.

     Was she close enough? Already she was, I won't say in the shadow of the land, but in the very blackness of it, already swallowed up as it were, gone too close to be recalled, gone from me altogether.

     "Give the mate a call," I said to the young man who stood at my elbow as still as death. "And turn all hands up."

 
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