e," he said. That's what he said. What terrified him
was the thought that the drowning was not over yet. No doubt he wanted
to be done with that abomination as quickly as possible. Nobody in the
boat made a sound. In the dark she seemed to fly, but of course she
could not have had much way. Then the shower swept ahead, and the great,
distracting, hissing noise followed the rain into distance and died out.
There was nothing to be heard then but the slight wash about the boat's
sides. Somebody's teeth were chattering violently. A hand touched his
back. A faint voice said, "You there?" Another cried out shakily,
"She's gone!" and they all stood up together to look astern. They saw no
lights. All was black. A thin cold drizzle was driving into their faces.
The boat lurched slightly. The teeth chattered faster, stopped, and
began again twice before the man could master his shiver sufficiently to
say, "Ju-ju-st in ti-ti-me. . . . Brrrr." He recognised the voice of the
chief engineer saying surlily, "I saw her go down. I happened to turn my
head." The wind had dropped almost completely.

'They watched in the dark with their heads half turned to windward as if
expecting to hear cries. At first he was thankful the night had covered
up the scene before his eyes, and then to know of it and yet to have
seen and heard nothing appeared somehow the culminating point of an
awful misfortune. "Strange, isn't it?" he murmured, interrupting himself
in his disjointed narrative.

'It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had an unconscious
conviction that the reality could not be half as bad, not half as
anguishing, appalling, and vengeful as the created terror of his
imagination. I believe that, in this first moment, his heart was wrung
with all the suffering, that his soul knew the accumulated savour of all
the fear, all the horror, all the despair of eight hundred human beings
pounced upon in the night by a sudden and violent death, else why should
he have said, "It seemed to me that I must jump out of that accursed
boat and swim back to see--half a mile--more--any distance--to the very
spot . . ."? Why this impulse? Do you see the significance? Why back to
the very spot? Why not drown alongside--if he meant drowning? Why back
to the very spot, to see--as if his imagination had to be soothed by the
assurance that all was over before death could bring relief? I defy any
one of you to offer another explanation. It was one of those biz