Citation de batlamb
Pour changer la scène aussi bien que pour se donner l’agrément d’observer l’approche du bateau, il franchit les porte-haubans et monta jusqu’à la galerie de tribord. Ces balcons d’apparence vénitienne mentionnés plus haut, formaient des retraites coupées du pont. Comme son pied foulait les mousses marines demi-humides, demi-sèches qui tapissaient l’endroit, comme sa joue recevait l’évent d’un souffle de brise isolé, fantomatique risée sans héraut ni escorte ; comme son regard tombait sur la rangée de petits contre-sabords ronds, tous fermés d’une rondelle de cuivre ainsi que les yeux d’un mort dans le cercueil, et sur la porte de la cabine, anciennement reliée à la galerie (où jadis s’étaient ouverts également les contre-sabords), mais à présent calfatée et assujettie aussi fermement qu’un couvercle de sarcophage à la paroi, au seuil et aux montants goudronnés d’une sombre couleur pourpre ; comme il songeait au temps où dans cette cabine et sur ce balcon d’apparat avaient retenti les voix des officiers du roi d’Espagne, et où les filles des vice-rois de Lima s’étaient accoudées, peut-être à l’endroit même où il se tenait maintenant ; comme ces images et d’autres encore flottaient dans son esprit ainsi que la risée dans l’air calme, il sentit monter en lui cette rêveuse inquiétude qu’un homme seul dans la prairie se prend à éprouver devant le repos de midi.
To change the scene, as well as to please himself with a leisurely observation of the coming boat, stepping over into the mizzen-chains, he clambered his way into the starboard quarter-gallery—one of those abandoned Venetian-looking water-balconies previously mentioned—retreats cut off from the deck. As his foot pressed the half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cats-paw—an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed—as this ghostly cats-paw came fanning his cheek; as his glance fell upon the row of small, round dead-lights—all closed like coppered eyes of the coffined—and the state-cabin door, once connecting with the gallery, even as the dead-lights had once looked out upon it, but now calked fast like a sarcophagus lid; and to a purple-black tarred-over, panel, threshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time, when that state-cabin and this state-balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish king’s officers, and the forms of the Lima viceroy’s daughters had perhaps leaned where he stood—as these and other images flitted through his mind, as the cats-paw through the calm, gradually he felt rising a dreamy inquietude, like that of one who alone on the prairie feels unrest from the repose of the noon.
To change the scene, as well as to please himself with a leisurely observation of the coming boat, stepping over into the mizzen-chains, he clambered his way into the starboard quarter-gallery—one of those abandoned Venetian-looking water-balconies previously mentioned—retreats cut off from the deck. As his foot pressed the half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom cats-paw—an islet of breeze, unheralded, unfollowed—as this ghostly cats-paw came fanning his cheek; as his glance fell upon the row of small, round dead-lights—all closed like coppered eyes of the coffined—and the state-cabin door, once connecting with the gallery, even as the dead-lights had once looked out upon it, but now calked fast like a sarcophagus lid; and to a purple-black tarred-over, panel, threshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time, when that state-cabin and this state-balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish king’s officers, and the forms of the Lima viceroy’s daughters had perhaps leaned where he stood—as these and other images flitted through his mind, as the cats-paw through the calm, gradually he felt rising a dreamy inquietude, like that of one who alone on the prairie feels unrest from the repose of the noon.
