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I determined to get baptized. I said to myself, that perhaps they would not then flog me, at any rate it was worth trying my comrades had told me that it would be of no good. But,' I said to myself, 'who knows? perhaps they will pardon me, they will have more compassion on a Christian than on a Mohammedan.' They baptized me, and give me the name of Alexander; but, in spite of that, I had to take my flogging; they did not let me off a single stroke; I was, however, very savage

Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last becomes a disease. I declare that the best man in the world can become hardened and brutified to such a point, that nothing will distinguish him from a wild beast. Blood and power intoxicate; they aid the development of callousness and debauchery; the mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty in the form of pleasure; the man and the citizen disappear for ever in the tyrant; and then a return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible.

How frightful it was, that voice of the sick man, that broken, dying voice, in the midst of that silence so dead and complete! In a corner there are some sick people not yet asleep, talking in a low voice, stretched on their pallets. One of them is telling the story of his life, all about things infinitely far off; things that have fled for ever; he is talking of his trampings through the world. of his children, his wife, the old ways of his life. And the very accent of the man's voice tells you that all those things are for ever over for him, that he is as a limb cut off from the world of men, cut off, thrown aside; there is another, listening intently to what he is saying.

Life, a series of increasing sufferings, flies further and further towards its end—the most terrible suffering.

furled around the mast

the older days

“Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”

carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated

No,” the old man said. “You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them.”