extorted from the dire extremity of nine good and honourable
seamen, revolted me. I saw the duplicity of the sea's most tender
mood. It was so because it could not help itself, but the awed
respect of the early days was gone. I felt ready to smile bitterly
at its enchanting charm and glare viciously at its furies. In a
moment, before we shoved off, I had looked coolly at the life of my
choice. Its illusions were gone, but its fascination remained. I
had become a seaman at last.

We pulled hard for a quarter of an hour, then laid on our oars
waiting for our ship. She was coming down on us with swelling
sails, looking delicately tall and exquisitely noble through the
mist. The captain of the brig, who sat in the stern sheets by my
side with his face in his hands, raised his head and began to speak
with a sort of sombre volubility. They had lost their masts and
sprung a leak in a hurricane; drifted for weeks, always at the
pumps, met more bad weather; the ships they sighted failed to make
them out, the leak gained upon them slowly, and the seas had left
them nothing to make a raft of. It was very hard to see ship after
ship pass by at a distance, "as if everybody had agreed that we
must be left to drown," he added. But they went on trying to keep
the brig afloat as long as possible, and working the pumps
constantly on insufficient food, mostly raw, till "yesterday
evening," he continued monotonously, "just as the sun went down,
the men's hearts broke."

He made an almost imperceptible pause here, and went on again with
exactly the same intonation:

"They told me the brig could not be saved, and they thought they