A lively boy’s eye view of travelling in a boat and looking through a porthole.  Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) was a small child when his father died and his widow and son were obliged to go and live with Gorky’s grandfather.  It was the abrupt end to a short period of innocence and safety.  Even his baby brother, born a matter of days before, prompted by their mother’s loss-shock, died in his turn and was travelling with them, swathed like a package ready for burial. 

I clambered up on to the piles of luggage and trunks, and looked out of the porthole, which was round and bulging like a horse’s eye. 

Source: Maxim Gorky, My Childhood, trans. Ronald Wilks (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1966), p. 16

Photo credit: alkemade at pixabay