Gather ye rosebuds while ye may

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
girl with a pearl earring vermeer
Gustav Klimt Kiss painting
Head of Christ
¡¡¡¡These are merely a few of the things that went through my mind, and are related for the sake of vindicating in advance the weak and helpless role I was destined to play. But I thought also of my mother and sisters, and pictured their grief. I was among the missing dead of the Martinez disaster, an unrecovered body. I could see the headlines in the papers, the fellows at the University Club and the Bibelot shaking their heads and saying, 'Poor Chap!' And I could see Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-by to him that morning, lounging in a dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window-couch and delivering himself of oracular and pessimistic epigrams. ¡¡¡¡And all the while, rolling, plunging, climbing the moving mountains and falling and wallowing in the foaming valleys, the schooner Ghost was fighting her way farther and farther into the heart of the Pacific- and I was on her. I could hear the wind above. It came to my ears as a muffled roar. Now and again feet stamped overhead.