And he found in me a willing pupil, eager as I was
for violent emotions and tortured by self-contempt, wild passions and
all the pangs of lost love-joys.
In Holland, too my father had immediately hired a boat to sail the
ocean, and the Scheveningen seamen had quite some trouble to make him
understand that the North Sea was not an Italian gulf or lake and in
rough weather would not permit of any rash enterprises in small
sailboats. Yet after a few weeks, be managed to attain his object and I
followed him gladly.
One afternoon we had sailed out, dressed in our oilskins, and the
skipper who, submerged to the waist, had pushed us off the shore
through the breakers, had warned us to be back within two hours, for at
that time the ebb-tide set in and, with the fresh north breeze, the
strong current would make it difficult for us to land. My father had
nodded as though he were thinking of something else and had long ago
penetrated and computed the caprices of the gray and formidable North
Sea.
For an hour we sailed on silently, as was frequently our wont, my
father holding the rudder.
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