effect upon the illusion of tragic dignity our self-esteem had thrown over the contests of mankind with the sea.  On that exquisite day of gently breathing peace and veiled sunshine perished my romantic love to what men’s imagination had proclaimed the most august aspect of Nature.  The cynical indifference of the sea to the merits of human suffering and courage, laid bare in this ridiculous, panic-tainted performance extorted from the dire extremity of nine good and honourable seamen, revolted me.  I saw the duplicity of the sea’s most tender mood.  It was so because it could not help itself, but the awed respect of the early days was gone.  I felt ready to smile bitterly at its enchanting charm and glare viciously at its furies.  In a moment, before we shoved off, I had looked coolly at the life of my choice.  Its illusions were gone, but its fascination remained.  I had become a seaman at last.

We pulled hard for a quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars waiting for our ship.  She was coming down on us with swelling sails, looking delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the mist.  The captain of the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my side with his face in his hands, raised his head and began to speak with a sort of sombre volubility.  They had lost their masts and sprung a leak in a hurricane; drifted for weeks, always at the pumps, met more bad weather; the ships they sighted failed to make them out, the leak gained upon them slowly, and the seas had left them nothing to make a raft of.  It was very hard to see ship after ship pass by at a distance, “as if everybody had agreed that we must be left to drown,” he added.  But they went on trying to keep the brig afloat as long as possible, and working the pumps constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till “yesterday evening,” he continued monotonously, “just as the sun went down, the men’s hearts broke.”

He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again with exactly the same intonation: 

“They told me the brig could not be saved, and they thought they had done enough for themselves.  I said nothing to that.  It was true.  It was no mutiny.  I had nothing to say to them.  They lay about aft all night, as still as so many dead men.  I did not lie down.  I kept a look-out.  When the first light came I saw your ship at once.  I waited for more light; the breeze began to fail on my face.  Then I shouted out as loud as I was able, ’Look at that ship!’ but only two men got up very slowly and came to me.  At first only we three stood alone, for a long time, watching you coming down to us, and feeling the breeze drop to a calm almost; but afterwards others, too, rose, one after another, and by-and-by I had all my crew behind me.  I turned round and said to them that they could see the ship was coming our way, but in this small breeze she might come too late after all, unless we turned to and tried to keep the brig afloat long enough to give you time to save us all.  I spoke like that to them, and then I gave the command to man the pumps.”