Hadn't we all commenced with the same desire, ended with the same knowledge, carried the memory of the same cherished glamour through the sordid days of imprecation?
What wonder that when some heavy prod gets home the bond is found to be close; that besides the fellowship of the craft there is felt the strength of a wider feeling--the feeling that binds a man to a child.

He was there before me, believing that age and wisdom can find a remedy against the pain of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a young fellow in a scrape that is the very devil of a scrape, the sort of scrape greybeards wag at solemnly while they hide a smile.

And he had been deliberating upon death--confound him! He had found that to meditate about because he thought he had saved his life, while all its glamour had gone with the ship in the night.

What more natural! It was tragic enough and funny enough in all conscience to call aloud for compassion, and in what was I better than the rest of us to refuse him my pity?
And even as I looked at him the mists rolled into the rent, and his voice spoke-- '"I was so lost, you know.

It was the sort of thing one does not expect to happen to one.