Chapter XVII: The Moon Turned Round Again (4)

“You know how many they saved? Frank and another man and a lad from the _Lizzie_, and seven from a barque, and six from a Lowestoft boat. We saw them all in, and then they wanted us to go to bed. ‘Why should we go to bed?’ we said. We didn’t want to go to bed. I went to bed sometime the next day, but it wasn’t till the following night that I slept--not to call sleeping.... Nunan, they said, was worse than I; the horses, perhaps, though they got them the next day but one, all but two....”

His eyes were half closed, and we prepared to leave him: he opened them again, hearing us move.

“I want to know if you can tell me something before you go,” he
said; “it’s often puzzled me. I can tell you in half a minute. It’s
this: If you were to ask me whether I thought my own life worth
such and such a vast deal of labour,--the risk of other lives too,
maybe,--I think I should have to say, No. At any rate, it would be
a question of balance, value for value, and so on, you see. And I
know other men think the same. But as soon as it’s a question of
anybody else’s life, the case seems to be different. John Broadwood
would have jumped up just the same if Frank Martin had been the
biggest rapscallion who ever handled a net. Now where’s the sense
in it? I’m not saying there isn’t any; I’m asking. I went too. I’d
have gone in the boat, but it would have kept a better man out of a
place; and I ask myself the reason of it all. It isn’t
reason--can’t be; and yet reasonable men will do it. ‘Thank God for
that,’ you say. Well, that’s unanswerable too.... I see you can’t
help me. I’ve been asking such questions all my life, and shall go
on, I suppose, till the end now.... I’m very tired....
Good-night....”

_Printed by The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._