side; or clinging to a doorpost with the changing face and the relaxing

fingers of the death-agony. He heard the click of the trigger, the thud

of the ball, the cry of the victim; he saw the blood flow. And this

building up of circumstance was like a consecration of the man, till he

seemed to walk in sacrificial fillets. Next he considered Davis, with

his thick-fingered, coarse-grained, oat-bread commonness of nature, his

indomitable valour and mirth in the old days of their starvation, the

endearing blend of his faults and virtues, the sudden shining forth of a

tenderness that lay too deep for tears; his children, Adar and her bowel

complaint, and Adar's doll. No, death could not be suffered to approach

that head even in fancy; with a general heat and a bracing of his

muscles, it was borne in on Herrick that Adar's father would find in him

a son to the death. And even Huish showed a little in that sacredness;

by the tacit adoption of daily life they were become brothers; there was

an implied bond of loyalty in their cohabitation of the ship and their

passed miseries, to which Herrick must be a little true or wholly

dishonoured. Horror of sudden death for horror of sudden death, there

was here no hesitation possible: it must be Attwater. And no sooner was

the thought formed (which was a sentence) than his whole mind of man ran

in a panic to the other side: and when he looked within himself, he was

aware only of turbulence and inarticulate outcry.

In all this there was no thought of Robert Herrick. He had complied with

the ebb-tide in man's affairs, and the tide had carried him away; he

heard already the roaring of the maelstrom that must hurry him under.

And in his bedevilled and dishonoured soul there was no thought of self.

132

The Ebb-Tide