them, as if your mind had kept firm hold of your responsibility
during the hours of sleep.

You contemplate mentally your mischance, till little by little your
mood changes, cold doubt steals into the very marrow of your bones,
you see the inexplicable fact in another light. That is the time
when you ask yourself, How on earth could I have been fool enough
to get there? And you are ready to renounce all belief in your
good sense, in your knowledge, in your fidelity, in what you
thought till then was the best in you, giving you the daily bread
of life and the moral support of other men's confidence.

The ship is lost or not lost. Once stranded, you have to do your
best by her. She may be saved by your efforts, by your resource
and fortitude bearing up against the heavy weight of guilt and
failure. And there are justifiable strandings in fogs, on
uncharted seas, on dangerous shores, through treacherous tides.
But, saved or not saved, there remains with her commander a
distinct sense of loss, a flavour in the mouth of the real, abiding
danger that lurks in all the forms of human existence. It is an
acquisition, too, that feeling. A man may be the better for it,
but he will not be the same. Damocles has seen the sword suspended
by a hair over his head, and though a good man need not be made
less valuable by such a knowledge, the feast shall not henceforth
have the same flavour.

Years ago I was concerned as chief mate in a case of stranding
which was not fatal to the ship. We went to work for ten hours on
end, laying out anchors in readiness to heave off at high water.
While I was still busy about the decks forward I heard the steward