f 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