’He assumed an air of indifference.

’"I dare say I am less calm now than I was then.  I was ready for anything.  These were trifles. . . .”

’"You had a lively time of it in that boat,” I remarked

’"I was ready,” he repeated.  “After the ship’s lights had gone, anything might have happened in that boat—­anything in the world—­and the world no wiser.  I felt this, and I was pleased.  It was just dark enough too.  We were like men walled up quick in a roomy grave.  No concern with anything on earth.  Nobody to pass an opinion.  Nothing mattered.”  For the third time during this conversation he laughed harshly, but there was no one about to suspect him of being only drunk.  “No fear, no law, no sounds, no eyes—­not even our own, till—­till sunrise at least.”

’I was struck by the suggestive truth of his words.  There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea.  Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.  When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, took care of you.  It is as if the souls of men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set free for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination.  Of course, as with belief, thought, love, hate, conviction, or even the visual aspect of material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are men, and in this one there was something abject which made the isolation more complete—­there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke.  They were exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker:  he focussed on them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way.  Trust a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion.  It was part of the burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea that they did not come to blows.  It was all threats, all a terribly effective feint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the tremendous disdain of the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph, are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of men.  I asked, after waiting for a while, “Well, what happened?” A futile question.  I knew too much already to hope for the grace of a single uplifting touch, for the favour of hinted madness, of shadowed horror.  “Nothing,” he said.  “I meant business, but they meant noise only.  Nothing happened.”