e span
of life left for retrieving one guilty minute; no future could he look
for to live it down, so certain had he become that this night death was
hard after him.

Two stars reeling, kind, bright stars, shone life for others though not
for him. Perhaps for him, he wanted to believe; some coward drop in his
blood tried to cheat reason and conscience. Why not for him? Could his
doom be so heavy as to sink that great bulk with its scores of souls? And
though now he should freely release others of his peril, who would ever
count it to him for righteousness, to soften the reproach that would lie
against his name so long as ever it were remembered?

The cold touched his brain. Surely he had died before, long ago, out of
all this pain and distress. Waves heaved gigantically; spray dashed hard
in his face; he shrank humanly, knowing he was not fit to die; she was
coming through the sea bringing life. No, ah! not now. She was lurking in
the sea holding death.

'Madness and treason are not in him.'

'He is a devil,' said Philip, 'a very devil. See! Go you now, and feign
to persuade for abandoning the boat, and shipping together.'

'That will I in all good faith,' and he went and came again.

'First he refused outright; then he said, when the moment came we should
know as well as he.'

'I knew it, I knew it,' chattered Philip, 'oh, a devil he is! Sir, you
will see me out of his hands. I know what he intends: on the instant you
quit the boat he casts off and has me at his mercy, he and that thing
below. I am no coward, and it ill becomes you to hint it; and I fear
death no more than any sinner must, no clean, straight death.

'Sir, his putting out of life was long and bloody: I saw it; death by
inches. And he looked at me with infernal hatred then; the very same I
saw in his eyes but now. Why should he check at sudden murder, but for a
fouler revenge. You cannot judge as I. You have not seen him day after
day. Treacherously he accepts friendship; he feigns to be witless; and
all the while this hell-fire is hidden out of sight. You do not know how
he has been denied opportunity, till rashly I offered it.

'O sir, quit of him this once, I am quit of him for ever! No, I mean no
villainy against him, but--but--it happens--there is every inducement for
him to choose that he and his boat never be seen of us again. Drown? no,
he never was born to drown. The devil sees to his own.

'It is true--true. You saw the Thing yoursel