No tufted islets, gray
headlands, nor glistening patches of white canvas ever marred the
symmetry of that unbroken curve. Clouds came and went, rising up
over the rim of the circle, flowing across the space of it, and
spilling away and down across the opposite rim.
The world faded as the procession of the weeks marched by. The
world faded until at last there ceased to be any world except the
little world of the Snark, freighted with her seven souls and
floating on the expanse of the waters. Our memories of the world,
the great world, became like dreams of former lives we had lived
somewhere before we came to be born on the Snark. After we had been
out of fresh vegetables for some time, we mentioned such things in
much the same way I have heard my father mention the vanished apples
of his boyhood. Man is a creature of habit, and we on the Snark had
got the habit of the Snark. Everything about her and aboard her was
as a matter of course, and anything different would have been an
irritation and an offence.
There was no way by which the great world could intrude. Our bell
rang the hours, but no caller ever rang it. There were no guests to
dinner, no telegrams, no insistent telephone jangles invading our
privacy.
