"We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren't perhaps we should be less wise at fifty."
"Now drink, my friend. Don't let the nonsense I talk interfere with you."
He waved his thin hand towards the bottle, and the skipper finished what remained in his glass.
"You ain't drinking nothin," he said, reaching for the whisky.
"I am of a sober habit," smiled the Swede. "I intoxicate myself in ways which I fancy are more subtle. But perhaps that is only vanity. Anyhow, the effects are more lasting and the results less deleterious."
"They say there's a deal of cocaine taken in the States now," said the captain.
Neilson chuckled.
"But I do not see a white man often," he continued, "and for once I don't think a drop of whisky can do me any harm."
He poured himself out a little, added some soda, and took a sip.
"And presently I found out why the spot had such an unearthly loveliness. Here love had tarried for a moment like a migrant bird that happens on a ship in mid-ocean and for a little while folds its tired wings. The fragrance of a beautiful passion hovered over it like the fragrance of hawthorn in May in the meadows of my home. It seems to me that the places where men have loved or suffered keep about them always some faint aroma of something that has not wholly died. It is as though they had acquired a spiritual significance which mysteriously affects those who pass. I wish I could make myself clear." He smiled a little. "Though I cannot imagine that if I did you would understand."