“You seem to forget that in risking your own life you risk the lives of those who sail along with you,” replied Jim, with a bold yet good-humoured look at the skipper.
“And what if I do risk their lives?—they ain’t worth much, either, I’m sure?”
“Not to you, Morley, but worth a good deal to themselves, not to mention their wives and families and friends. You know well enough that if I had wished ever so much to return aboard last night your boat could not have got alongside the Gull for the sea. Moreover, you also know that if you had attempted to put to sea in such weather, this leaky tub, with rotten sails and running gear, would have been a wreck on the Goodwin sands before now, and you and I, with the two men and the boy, would have been food for the gulls and fishes.”
“Not at all,” retorted Jones, “there’s not much fear of our lives here. The lifeboat crews are too active for that; and as to the sloop, why, she’s insured you know for her full value—for more than her value, indeed.”
Jones said this with a chuckle and a sly expression in his face, as he glanced meaningly at his companion.
“I know nothing about your insurance or your cargo, and, what’s more, I don’t want to know,” said Jim, almost angrily. “You’ve been at Square-Tom again,” he added, suddenly laying his hand upon the shoulder of his companion and looking earnestly into his eyes.
It was now Jones’s turn to be angry, yet it was evident that he made an effort to restrain his feelings, as he replied, “Well, what if I have? It’s one thing for you to advise me to become a teetotaller, and it’s quite another thing for me to agree to do it. I tell you again, as I’ve often told you before, Jim Welton, that I don’t mean to do it, and I’m not going to submit to be warned and reasoned with by you, as if you was my grandfather. I know that drink is the curse of my life, and I know that it will kill me, and that I am a fool for giving way to it, but it is the only thing that makes me able to endure this life; and as for the next, I don’t care for it, and I don’t believe in it.”
“But your not believing in it does not make it less certain,” replied Jim, quietly, but without any approach to solemnity in his tone or look, for he knew that his companion was not in a mood just then to stand such treatment. “You remember the story of the ostrich that was run down? Finding that it could not escape, it stuck its head in the sand and thought that nobody saw it. You may shut your eyes, Morley, but facts remain facts for all that.”
“Shutting my eyes is just what I am not doing,” returned Jones, flinging round and striding to the other side of the deck; then, turning quickly, he strode back, and added, with an oath, “have I not told you that I see myself, my position, and my prospects, as clearly as you do, and that I intend to face them all, and take the consequences?”
Jim Welton flushed slightly, and his eyes dilated, as he replied—