ad immortality in your eyes," I answered, dropping the "sir,"--an
experiment, for I thought the intimacy of the conversation warranted it.

He took no notice. "By that, I take it, you see something that is alive,
but that necessarily does not have to live for ever."

"I read more than that," I continued boldly.

"Then you read consciousness. You read the consciousness of life that it
is alive; but still no further away, no endlessness of life."

How clearly he thought, and how well he expressed what he thought! From
regarding me curiously, he turned his head and glanced out over the
leaden sea to windward. A bleakness came into his eyes, and the lines of
his mouth grew severe and harsh. He was evidently in a pessimistic mood.

"Then to what end?" he demanded abruptly, turning back to me. "If I am
immortal--why?"

I halted. How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could I put
into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heard
in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance?

"What do you believe, then?" I countered.

"I believe that life is a mess," he answered promptly. "It is like
yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour,
a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The
big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the
weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and
move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?"

He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors
who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships.

"They move, so does the jelly-fish move. They move in order to eat in
order that they may keep moving. There you have it. They live for their
belly's sake, and the belly is for their sake. It's a circle; you get
nowhere. Neither do they. In the end they come to a standstill. They
move no more. They are dead."

"They have dreams," I interrupted, "radiant, flashing dreams--"

"Of grub," he concluded sententiously.

"And of more--"

"Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it." His voice
sounded harsh. There was no levity in it. "For, look you, they dream of
making lucky voyages which will bring them more money, of becoming the
mates of ships, of finding fortunes--in short, of being in a better
position for preying on their fellows, of having all night in, good grub
and somebod