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Without reason, they fell again into silence

They had passed through two distinct psychological changes since the sea

spewed theathered into a little

terror-stricken, gibbering group At first they babbled At first

inarticulate, confused, they dripped strings of mere words; expletives,

exclamations, detached phrases, broken clauses, sentences that started

with subjects and trailed, unpredicated, to stupid silence; sentences

beginning subjectless and hobbling to futile conclusion It was as

though mentally they slavered But every phrase, however confused and

inept, voiced their panic, voiced the long strain of their fearful

buffeting and their terrific final struggle And every clause, whether

sentiious, or profane, breathed their wonder, their

pathetic, poignant, horrified wonder, that such things could be All

this was intensified by the anarchy of sea and air and sky, by the

incessant explosion of the waves, by the hich see universe, by a downpour which threatened to

beat their sodden bodies to pulp, by all the connotation of terror that

lay in the darkness and in their unguarded condition on a barbarous,

se-like stupor of their exhaustion

With the day, vocabulary, graic returned They still iterated

and reiterated their experiences, but with a coherence which gradually

grew to consistence In between, however, came sudden, sinister attacks

of du," Billy Fairfax broke their last silence suddenly,

"ould beco fatuity which marked their comments