"You men of the sea," I said, "attain a greater growth of soul than do we whose roots are in the land. You are men of wider spiritual vision, of deeper capacity than are we."
The coastguard's weather-beaten visage altered subtly.
"How can that be, Monsieur? Our sins stalk us like vast red shadows.
We live violently, we men of the sea."
"But you really LIVE—spiritually and physically. You attain a spiritual growth, a vision, an understanding, a depth seldom reached by us:—a wide kindness, a charity, a noble humanity outside the circumference of our experience."
He said, looking seaward out of vague, sea-gray eyes: "We drink too deeply. We love too often. We men of the sea have great need of intercession and of prayer."
"Not YOU."
"There was a girl at Rosporden…. And one at Bannalec…. And others…from the ends of the earth to the ends of it…We Icelanders drank deep. And afterwards…in the China seas…."
His gray Breton eyes brooded on the flowing sapphire of the sea; the low sun painted his furrowed face red.
"Not one among you but lays down his life for others as quietly and simply as he fills his pipe. From the rocking mizzen you look down calmly upon the world of men tossing with petty and complex passions—look down with the calm, kindly comprehension of a mature soul which has learned something of Immortal toleration. The scheme of things is clearer to you than to us; your pity, wiser; our faith more logical."
"We are children," he muttered, "we men of the sea."