Reynolds turned away sickened.  From a point, apart from the rest, he strained his eyes to keep in sight the small black object now hidden, now revealed, by the waves.  A fierce sense of kinship for that man in the water seized him.  He, too, perhaps had grappled with some unendurable situation and been overcome.  What if he was an utterly worthless asset on the great human ledger?  He was a fellow-being, suffering, tempted, vanquished.  Was it kind to bring him back, to go through with it all again?

For answer Reynolds’s muscles strained with those of the sailors rowing below:  all the life and youth in him rose in rebellion against unnecessary death.  He watched with teeth hard set as the small boat climbed to the crest of a wave, then plunged into the trough again, crawling by imperceptible inches toward the bobbing spot in the water.  He longed to be in the boat, in the water even, helping to save that human life that only on the verge of extinction had gained significance.  What if the man wished to die?  No matter, he must be saved, saved from himself, given another chance, made to face it out, whatever it was.  Not until then did Reynolds remember another life that be had dared to threaten, that even now he meant to take if the wheel of chance swung against him.  Suddenly he faced the awful judgment of his own act, and shuddered back as one who, standing upon a precipice, trembles in terror before the mad desire to leap.

“I’ll stick it out!” he said half aloud as if in promise.  “Whatever comes, I’ll take my medicine, I’ll—­”

An eager murmur swept through the crowd.  A sailor with a rope about him was being lowered from the life-boat.

For five tense minutes the two men rose and fell at the mercy of the high waves, and the distance between them did not lessen by an inch.

Then a passenger with a binocular announced that the sailor was swimming around to the far side to get the man between him and the boat.

With long, steady, overhand strokes, the sailor was gaining his way, and when at last he reached the apparently motionless object and got a rope under its arms, and the two were hauled into the life-boat, a rousing cheer went up from the big steamer above.

Reynolds drew in his breath sharply and turned away from the railing.  As he did so he was hailed by a group of friends who were returning to their cards, waiting face downward on the small tables in the smoking-room.

“Behold His Nibs!” shouted Glass, the actor, “the luckiest duffer that ever hit a high-ball!”

“How did you happen to do it?” cried another.

Reynolds lifted his hand to his bewildered head.  “Do what?” he asked dully.  “I’m not on.”