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_ 'He heard me out with his head on one side, and I had another
glimpse through a rent in the mist in which he moved and had his
being. The dim candle spluttered within the ball of glass, and that
was all I had to see him by; at his back was the dark night with the
clear stars, whose distant glitter disposed in retreating planes lured
the eye into the depths of a greater darkness; and yet a mysterious
light seemed to show me his boyish head, as if in that moment the
youth within him had, for a moment, glowed and expired. "You are
an awful good sort to listen like this," he said. "It does me good.
You don't know what it is to me. You don't" . . . words seemed to
fail him. It was a distinct glimpse. He was a youngster of the sort
you like to see about you; of the sort you like to imagine yourself
to have been; of the sort whose appearance claims the fellowship of
these illusions you had thought gone out, extinct, cold, and which,
as if rekindled at the approach of another flame, give a flutter deep,
deep down somewhere, give a flutter of light . . . of heat! . . . Yes;
I had a glimpse of him then . . . and it was not the last of that
kind. . . . "You don't know what it is for a fellow in my position
to be believed--make a clean breast of it to an elder man. It is so
difficult--so awfully unfair--so hard to understand."
'The mists were closing again. I don't know how old I appeared
to him--and how much wise. Not half as old as I felt just then; not
half as uselessly wise as I knew myself to be. Surely in no other craft
as in that of the sea do the hearts of those already launched to sink
or swim go out so much to the youth on the brink, looking with
shining eyes upon that glitter of the vast surface which is only a
reflection of his own glances full of fire. There is such magnificent
vagueness in the expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such
a glorious indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that
are their own and only reward. What we get--well, we won't talk
of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life
is the illusion more wide of reality--in no other is the beginning _all_
illusion--the disenchantment more swift--the subjugation more
complete. Hadn't we all commenced with the same desire, ended
with the same knowledge, carried the memory of the same cherished
glamour through the sordid days of imprecation? What wonder that
when some heavy prod gets home the bond is found to be close;
that besides the fellowship of the craft there is felt the strength of
a wider feeling--the feeling that binds a man to a child. He was
there before me, believing that age and wisdom can find a remedy
against the pain of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a young
fellow in a scrape that is the very devil of a scrape, the sort of scrape
greybeards wag at solemnly while they hide a smile. And he had
been deliberating upon death--confound him! He had found that
to meditate about because he thought he had saved his life, while
all its glamour had gone with the ship in the night. What more
natural! It was tragic enough and funny enough in all conscience to
call aloud for compassion, and in what was I better than the rest of
us to refuse him my pity? And even as I looked at him the mists
rolled into the rent, and his voice spoke--
' "I was so lost, you know. It was the sort of thing one does not
expect to happen to one. It was not like a fight, for instance."
' "It was not," I admitted. He appeared changed, as if he had
suddenly matured.
' "One couldn't be sure," he muttered.
' "Ah! You were not sure," I said, and was placated by the sound
of a faint sigh that passed between us like the flight of a bird in the
night.
' "Well, I wasn't," he said courageously. "It was something like
that wretched story they made up. It was not a lie--but it wasn't
truth all the same. It was something. . . . One knows a downright
lie. There was not the thickness of a sheet of paper between the
right and the wrong of this affair."
' "How much more did you want?" I asked; but I think I spoke
so low that he did not catch what I said. He had advanced his
argument as though life had been a network of paths separated by
chasms. His voice sounded reasonable.
' "Suppose I had not--I mean to say, suppose I had stuck to the
ship? Well. How much longer? Say a minute--half a minute. Come.
In thirty seconds, as it seemed certain then, I would have been
overboard; and do you think I would not have laid hold of the first
thing that came in my way--oar, life-buoy, grating--anything?
Wouldn't you?"
' "And be saved," I interjected.
' "I would have meant to be," he retorted. "And that's more
than I meant when I" . . . he shivered as if about to swallow some
nauseous drug . . . "jumped," he pronounced with a convulsive
effort, whose stress, as if propagated by the waves of the air, made
my body stir a little in the chair. He fixed me with lowering eyes.
"Don't you believe me?" he cried. "I swear! . . . Confound it! You
got me here to talk, and . . . You must! . . . You said you would
believe." "Of course I do," I protested, in a matter-of-fact tone
which produced a calming effect. "Forgive me," he said. "Of
course I wouldn't have talked to you about all this if you had not
been a gentleman. I ought to have known . . . I am--I am--a
gentleman too . . ." "Yes, yes," I said hastily. He was looking
me squarely in the face, and withdrew his gaze slowly. "Now you
understand why I didn't after all . . . didn't go out in that way. I
wasn't going to be frightened at what I had done. And, anyhow, if
I had stuck to the ship I would have done my best to be saved. Men
have been known to float for hours--in the open sea--and be picked
up not much the worse for it. I might have lasted it out better
than many others. There's nothing the matter with my heart." He
withdrew his right fist from his pocket, and the blow he struck on
his chest resounded like a muffled detonation in the night.
' "No," I said. He meditated, with his legs slightly apart and his
chin sunk. "A hair's-breadth," he muttered. "Not the breadth of
a hair between this and that. And at the time . . ."
' "It is difficult to see a hair at midnight," I put in, a little
viciously I fear. Don't you see what I mean by the solidarity of the
craft? I was aggrieved against him, as though he had cheated me--
me!--of a splendid opportunity to keep up the illusion of my
beginnings, as though he had robbed our common life of the last spark
of its glamour. "And so you cleared out--at once."
' "Jumped," he corrected me incisively. "Jumped--mind!" he
repeated, and I wondered at the evident but obscure intention.
"Well, yes! Perhaps I could not see then. But I had plenty of time
and any amount of light in that boat. And I could think, too. Nobody
would know, of course, but this did not make it any easier for me.
You've got to believe that, too. I did not want all this talk. . . .
No . . . Yes . . . I won't lie . . . I wanted it: it is the very thing I
wanted--there. Do you think you or anybody could have made me
if I . . . I am--I am not afraid to tell. And I wasn't afraid to think
either. I looked it in the face. I wasn't going to run away. At first--
at night, if it hadn't been for those fellows I might have . . . No!
by heavens! I was not going to give them that satisfaction. They
had done enough. They made up a story, and believed it for all I
know. But I knew the truth, and I would live it down--alone, with
myself. I wasn't going to give in to such a beastly unfair thing. What
did it prove after all? I was confoundedly cut up. Sick of life--to
tell you the truth; but what would have been the good to shirk it--
in--in--that way? That was not the way. I believe--I believe it
would have--it would have ended--nothing."
'He had been walking up and down, but with the last word he
turned short at me.
' "What do _you_ believe?" he asked with violence. A pause ensued,
and suddenly I felt myself overcome by a profound and hopeless
fatigue, as though his voice had startled me out of a dream of
wandering through empty spaces whose immensity had harassed
my soul and exhausted my body.
' ". . . Would have ended nothing," he muttered over me obstinately,
after a little while. "No! the proper thing was to face it out--
alone for myself--wait for another chance--find out . . ." ' _
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