ardess, who called back, over her
shoulder, "It's a man overboard, sir, on the starboard side--"

Reynolds flung on his clothes. The boy in him was keen for excitement,
and in five minutes he was on deck, and had joined the crowd of
passengers that thronged the railing.

The life-boat was being lowered, groaning and protesting as it cleared
the davits and swung away from the ship's side. Far behind, in the still
shining wake of the steamer, a small black object bobbed helplessly in
the gray expanse of waters.

"What's the matter?" "Did he fall overboard!" "Did he jump in?" "Was it
suicide?" The air buzzed with questions. The sentimental contingent
clung to the theory that it was some poor stoker who could no longer
stand the heat, or a foreign refugee afraid to come into port. The more
practical argued that it was probably one of the seamen who, while doing
outside painting, had lost his balance and fallen into the sea.

A smug, well-dressed man, with close-cropped gray beard, and a detached
gaze that seemed to go no further than his rimless glasses, turned and
spoke to Reynolds:

"It has gotten to be quite the fashion for somebody in the steerage to
create this sort of sensation. It happened as I went over. If a man sees
fit to jump overboard, all well and good; in nine cases out of ten it's
a good riddance to the community. But why in Heaven's name should the
steamer put back? Why should several hundred people be delayed an hour
or so for the sake of an inconsiderate, useless fool?"

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 verg