Page:Orlando by Virginia Woolf.djvu/175

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ORLANDO

blown on the gale. Thus it is no great wonder if, as she pitted one sex against the other, and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities, and was not sure to which she belonged―it was no great wonder that she was about to cry out that she would return to Turkey and become a gipsy again when the anchor fell with a great splash into the sea; the sails came tumbling on deck, and she perceived (so sunk had she been in thought, that she had seen nothing for several days) that the ship was anchored off the coast of Italy. The Captain at once sent to ask the honour of her company ashore with him in the long boat.

When she returned the next morning, she stretched herself on her couch under the awning and arranged her draperies with the greatest decorum about her ankles.

"Ignorant and poor as we are compared with the other sex," she thought, continuing the sentence which she had left unfinished the other day, "armoured with every weapon as they are, while they debar us even from a knowledge of the alphabet" (and from these opening words it is plain that something had happened during the night to give her a push towards the female sex, for she was speaking more as a woman speaks than as a man, yet with a sort of content after all) "still―they fall from the mast-head―" Here she gave a great yawn and fell asleep. When she woke, the ship was sailing before a

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