For of his luck man has no glimmer of prescience. Day by day we rattle
the box, throw the dice; but of how these will fall we have no
knowledge. We only hope with the gambler's feverishness; and it is
this very hazard that keeps us crowding and pushing to hold our place
at the tables where fortune spins. Grow we sick of the game, sour with
our luck, weary of the hazard, and relinquish we our place at the
table, we are pushed back and out--elbowed, thrown, trampled.

We are all treasure-seekers set on a treasure-island in a boundless
sea. Cruelly marooned we are--flung ashore without appeal, and here
deserted until the ship that disembarked us suddenly swoops and the
press-gang snatches us again aboard--again without heed to our desire.
Whence the ship brought us we do not know, and whither it will carry
us we do not know; there is none to prick a return voyage disclosing
the ultimate haven, though pilots there be who pretend to the
knowledge--we cannot test them.

But the marooners, when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our
thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a
pick; the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being
acclimatised, we set to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts
already sunk, some seek to break new ground, but what the pick will
next turn up no one knows.

And it is this uncertainty, this hazard, that keeps us hammer, hammer,
hammering; that keeps us, some from brooding against the marooners,
their wanton desertion of us, our ultimate fate at their hands; others
from making ready against the return voyage as entreated by the
pilots.