“She’ll go clear,” said Garnett, and he took out his handkerchief and mopped the dent in his bald head.
“But it’s a d—d close shave,” answered Gantline.
As he spoke a great rolling sea rose on the weather-quarter, lifting full forty feet from trough to crest as it began its shoreward rush. On and on it rolled in majestic grandeur, a gigantic, white-topped mass, until it vanished into the thick haze of flying spray, but still bearing more and more to the northward. They went clear.
Dr. Davis was not present at a little conversation held between Mr. Garnett and the skipper some minutes later, but during the mate’s next watch on deck he found a chance to speak to him. He saw him standing under the mizzen watching the main-top-sail, and he crowded close into the mast, wiping his spectacles.
“Well, what do you think of it now?” he asked.
“Nothing,” growled Garnett, “except I made a mistake; and if I’d held on ten minutes there’d have been thirty more men gone to a lower latitude, that’s all.”
“But think of the responsibility. How would you have felt with the lives of thirty men on your conscience? Don’t you see, we have to accept some truths without stopping to reason them out. There may be no reason for that variation, but you see it exists, after all. It is the same way in regard to the duty we owe our Maker, and I am afraid you will acknowledge it only after you have ‘held on too long,’ as you admit in this case. As for a man going to a lower latitude, as you call it, there is no such place. A man’s hell is his own conscience.”
Garnett remained silent for some minutes watching the clews of the maintop-sail, and appeared to be absorbed in deep thought.
“Maybe you’re right about there not being any hell below, and maybe you’re not,” he finally said. “I hope you are right; but I’ve had some experience in my day, and had all kinds of luck, both good and bad. It don’t seem probable I’d strike it as rich as that. No, sir, it ain’t probable; though, of course, it’s possible.”
And Dr. Davis left him standing there with a strange, hopeful gleam in his eyes.