About this time there came a lull in the hellish, howling
hurricane; the fact being, I suppose, that we had reached the
centre of the cyclone. I suggested that we should try to go on
deck and see what was happening. So we started, only to find the
entrance to the companion so faithfully secured that we could not
by any means get out. We knocked and shouted, but no one
answered. My belief is that at this time everyone on the yacht
except ourselves had been washed away and drowned.

Then we returned to the saloon, which, except for a little
water trickling about the floor, was marvelously dry, and, being
hungry, retrieved some bits of food and biscuit from its corners
and ate. At this moment the cyclone began to blow again worse
than ever, but it seemed to us, from another direction, and
before it sped our poor derelict barque. It blew all day till for
my part I grew utterly weary and even longed for the inevitable
end. If my views were not quite those of Bastin, certainly they
were not those of Bickley. I had believed from my youth up that
the individuality of man, the ego, so to speak, does not die when
life goes out of his poor body, and this faith did not desert me
then. Therefore, I wished to have it over and learn what there
might be upon the other side.

We could not speak much because of the howling of the wind, but
Bickley did manage to shout to me something to the effect that
his partners would, in his opinion, make an end of their great
practice within two years, which, he added, was a pity. I nodded
my head, not caring twopence what happened to Bickley's partners
or their business, or to my own property, or to anything else.
When death is at hand most of us do not think much of such things