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In no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty, evenfrom the most simple data. It might be supposed that a catastrophe such as I have just related wouldhave effectually cooled my incipient passion for the sea. On the contrary, I never experienced amore ardent longing for the wild adventures incident to the life of a navigator than within a weekafter our miraculous deliverance. This short period proved amply long enough to erase from mymemory the shadows, and bring out in vivid light all the pleasurably exciting points of color, all thepicturesqueness, of the late perilous accident. My conversations with Augustus grew daily morefrequent and more intensely full of interest. He had a manner of relating his stories of the ocean(more than one half of which I now suspect to have been sheer fabrications) well adapted to haveweight with one of my enthusiastic temperament and somewhat gloomy although glowingimagination. It is strange, too, that he most strongly enlisted my feelings in behalf of the life of aseaman, when he depicted his more terrible moments of suffering and despair. For the bright side ofthe painting I had a limited sympathy. My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death orcaptivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray anddesolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown. Such visions or desires-for theyamounted to desires-are common, I have since been assured, to the whole numerous race of themelancholy among men-at the time of which I speak I regarded them only as prophetic glimpsesof a destiny which I felt myself in a measure bound to fulfil. Augustus thoroughly entered into mystate of mind. It is probable, indeed, that our intimate communion had resulted in a partialinterchange of character.