And we found nothing! Nothing except an immenseness
of deserted waves! Nothing remotely resembling a gigantic narwhale,
or an underwater islet, or a derelict shipwreck, or a runaway reef,
or anything the least bit unearthly!
So the reaction set in. At first, discouragement took hold of
people's minds, opening the door to disbelief. A new feeling appeared
on board, made up of three-tenths shame and seven-tenths fury.
The crew called themselves "out-and-out fools" for being
hoodwinked by a fairy tale, then grew steadily more furious!
The mountains of arguments amassed over a year collapsed all at once,
and each man now wanted only to catch up on his eating and sleeping,
to make up for the time he had so stupidly sacrificed.
With typical human fickleness, they jumped from one extreme
to the other. Inevitably, the most enthusiastic supporters
of the undertaking became its most energetic opponents.
This reaction mounted upward from the bowels of the ship, from the
quarters of the bunker hands to the messroom of the general staff;
and for certain, if it hadn't been for Commander Farragut's
characteristic stubbornness, the frigate would ultimately have put
back to that cape in the south.
But this futile search couldn't drag on much longer.
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