Everett Larson (DDR 830) - Naval Cruise Book

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He watched her every motion; he kept his gaze riveted upon her as a loving man who watches the unselfish toil of a delicate woman upon the slender thread of whose existence is hung the whole meaning and joy of the world. We all watched her. She was beautiful. We admired her qualities aloud, we boasted of them to one another, as though they had been our own . . . She was born in the thundering peal of hammers beating upon iron, in black eddies of smoke, under a grey sky . . . The clamorous and sombre stream gives birth to things, of beauty that float away into the sunshine of the world to be loved by men. She was one of that perfect brood. Less perfect than many perhaps, but she was ours, and, consequently, incompar- able. Joseph Conrad (The Nigger of the Narcissus)