william kent
Well-known member
Melville and Conrad probably the big hitters, Luke's beloved Patrick O'Brian's another. Under the Volcano gets all the plaudits, but Lowry was also a sailor and set his first novel, Ultramarine, at sea.
The skipper does not endorse my enthusiasm for the catch, even though it is larger than the two I saw yesterday. I begin to understand him as a professional pessimist, I begin to wonder what size the cod-end would have to be to draw enthusiasm from him, to raise him from the set anxiety shown in his eyes. His dedication since we started fishing is complete. It would be too much to say he is a different man from when we were on passage, but certainly he now has little time for conversation, or anything but searching for fish.
The Old Man and the Sea, of course