he nearest bench.

At the close of life, the loss of a man's customary nourishment extends
its debilitating influence rapidly from his body to his mind. Mr. Ronald
had tasted nothing but his cup of coffee since the previous night.
His mind began to wander strangely; he was not angry or frightened
or distressed. Instead of thinking of what had just happened, he was
thinking of his young days when he had been a cricket-player. One
special game revived in his memory, at which he had been struck on the
head by the ball. "Just the same feeling," he reflected vacantly, with
his hat off, and his hand on his forehead. "Dazed and giddy--just the
same feeling!"

He leaned back on the bench, and fixed his eyes on the sea, and wondered
languidly what had come to him. Farnaby and the woman, still following,
waited round the corner where they could just keep him in view.

The blue lustre of the sky was without a cloud; the sunny sea leapt
under the fresh westerly breeze. From the beach, the cries of children
at play, the shouts of donkey-boys driving their poor beasts, the
distant notes of brass instruments playing a waltz, and the mellow music
of the small waves breaking on the sand, rose joyously together on the
fragrant air. On the next bench, a dirty old boatman was prosing to a
stupid old visitor. Mr. Ronald listened, with a sense of vacant content
in the mere act of listening. The boatman's words found their way to his
ears like the other sounds that were abroad in the air. "Yes; them's
the Goodwin Sands, where you see the lightship. And that steamer there,
towing a vessel into the harbour, that's the Ramsgate Tug. Do you know
what I should like to see? I should like to see the Ramsgate Tug blow
up. Why? I'll tell you why. I belong to Broadstairs; I don't belong to
Ramsgate. Very well. I'm idling here, as you may see, without one copper
piece in my pocket to rub against another. What trade do I belong to?
I don't belong to no trade; I belong to a boat. The boat's rotting at
Broadstairs, for want of work. And all along of what? All along of the
Tug. The Tug has took the bread out of our mouths: me and my mates. Wait
a bit; I'll show you how. What did a ship do, in the good old times,
when she got on them sands--Goodwin Sands? Went to pieces, if it come on
to blow; or got sucked down little by little when it was fair weather.
Now I'm coming to it. What did We do (in the good old times, mind you)
when we happened to see that shi