Commodore Junk — page 208: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CAPTAIN HUMPHREY COMES TO. 201 This was after three weeks’ doubtful journey, wherein Dinny said “the obstinate divil had tried all he knew to die.” And it was so ungrateful, Dinny said, after the captain had saved his life, and that of all the prisoners who had not also been obstinate and died. Humpbhrey’s conscience was a great stone god full twelve feet high—an object that looked like a mummy-case set on end, as far as shape was concerned, but carved all over in the most wonderful way, the grotesque and weird bas-reliefs almost destroying the face, hands, and feet of the figure, flowing over them as they were, so that at first sight he looked upon a great mass of sculpture, out of which by degrees the features appeared. The old artist who designed the idol had strange ideas of decorative effect. He had cut in the hard stone a fine con- templative face ; but over it he had placed a gigantic head- dress, whereon were stony plumes of feathers, wreaths, and strange symbols, while pendent in every possible direction about the body were writhing creatures and snakes, with variations of the human form, engaged in strange struggles, and amongst them human heads turned into bosses or decor- ations of the giant robe. Humphrey Armstrong came partly to himself to see the cold, implacable face of this idol staring down at him from the gloom, ten feet from where he lay ; and it seemed to him, by slow degrees, that this was his conscience sternly and silently upbraiding him for the loss of his ship and the lives of his men, destroyed by his want of skill as a commander. Day after day, through his semi-delirium, did that great idol torture him, and seem, with its reproachful eyes, to burn into his brain. Days passed, and by degrees he began to be aware that he was lying on a bed of comfortable rugs and skins, stretched in Gomicbooks =)