im failure and defeat!

"There is no higher duty than the rescue of those in peril at sea.
He--Benjamin Corvet, who told me this--swore to me that, at the
beginning none upon the tug had any thought except to give aid. A
small line was drifted down to the tug and to this a hawser was
attached which they hauled aboard. There happened then the first of
those events which led those upon the tug into doing a great wrong.
He--Benjamin Corvet--had taken charge of the wheel of the tug; three
men were handling the hawser in ice and washing water at the stern.
The whistle accidentally blew, which those on the _Miwaka_ understood
to mean that the hawser had been secured, so they drew in the slack;
the hawser, tightened unexpectedly by the pitching of the sea, caught
and crushed the captain and deckhand of the tug and threw them into the
sea.

"Because they were short-handed now upon the tug, and also because
consultation was necessary over what was to be done, the young owner of
the _Miwaka_, Captain Stafford, came down the hawser onto the tug after
the line had been put straight. He came to the wheelhouse, where
Benjamin Corvet was, and they consulted. Then Benjamin Corvet learned
that the other owner was aboard the new ship as well--Ramsdell--the man
whose money you have just told me had built this and was soon to build
other ships. I did not understand before why learning that affected
him so much.

"'Stafford wanted us' (this is what Benjamin Corvet said) 'to tow him
up the lake; I would not do that, but I agreed to tow him to
Manistique. The night was dark, Father--no snow, but frightful wind
which had been increasing until it now sent the waves washing clear
across the tug. We had gone north an hour when, low upon the water to
my right, I saw a light, and there came to me the whistling of a buoy
which told me that we were passing nearer than I would have wished,
even in daytime, to windward of Boulder Reef. There are, Father, no
people on that reef; its sides of ragged rock go straight down forty
fathoms into the lake.

"'I looked at the man with me in the wheelhouse--at Stafford--and hated
him! I put my head out at the wheelhouse door and looked back at the
lights at the new, great steamer, following safe and straight at the
end of its towline. I thought of my two men upon the tug who had been
crushed by clumsiness of those on board that ship; and how my own ships
had had a name for never losing a man and th