[Following the Equator by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link book
Following the Equator

CHAPTER I
7/23

I did not see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort in the solid intervening bulkhead.

Still, to a delicate stomach even imaginary smoke can convey damage.
The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and autocratic vocation.

It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.
He was going home under a cloud.

The passengers knew about his trouble, and were sorry for him.

Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he had had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks.
A matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies.


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