And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor:
quite in the fashion of the Odyssey, too, where the Wanderers, and we with them, make landfall
on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn
and beach the black ship and disembark and wonder at cliff, glade and waterfall, we wondering (that is) through their eyes.
You will remark, secondly, in the casual passage I quoted, how the very few words spoken—those by John Silver, the villain, those by the Doctor who is the true punctum indifferens, the normal sane man of the story as truly as is Horatio in Hamlet—bite in, as by sharp acid, the impression of the story—the meaning of it, at that moment, to the mutineer and to the simply honest man.
Am I comparing small things with great? Why, Gentlemen, of course I am, and purposely; to convince you, if I can, that in small as in great—the same laws rule true narrative art.