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A return crossing becomes a scene of mass animal death, cable work, flies, and disease rather than adventure.

The bluntness of the page gives it force. It does not romanticize the voyage or enlarge it into symbolism; instead it records carcasses, rope, coping, and infestation with almost note-like precision, which makes the horror feel documentary.

Five lines of pure recapitulation: the 4,000 carcasses hauled back across with cable and rope while the crew copes with flies and mosquitos of disease. The page functions like a chorus, a refrain the book keeps returning to.