“‘Then let th’ farmers have a try; Jerry--Tom--Matthy Dodd----’ He jumped about here and there, singling out men and giving orders, all about horses. Broadwood sprawled on a locker, and he raised himself on his sound arm. ‘Yours is no good if ours won’t face it,’ he cried; but Joe took no notice. He and Dodd began to fetch out sweeps and spars and ropes and tackle, and the men outside pitched them into the boat. ‘Up!’ he cried to Broadwood; and John slid down while he got a stone jar of brandy and a couple of pannikins out of the locker. Some walked slowly out and up the beach, looking back over their shoulders, and then all at once a man broke into a quick trot. A dozen hangers-about followed, questioning as they ran. In ten minutes the clattering of horses was heard on the beach; and a man, coming in for more ropes, said that a hundred shovels were clearing the village street.... “Well, you’ve heard the tale, or you wouldn’t have come to me: you know what we did and how it ended. What more do you want? To be told what you don’t know, you’ll say. Not you. Nobody wants to be told what they don’t know. They want to be told what they do know, or think they know. Why, all the fellows we glorify are those who tell us in the main what we already know--tell us we’re nearly quite right; a bit--eh?--here, or a trifle there that our worships have overlooked in our general rightness, but wonderfully right on the whole. You’ll listen as long as I tell this tale as you already know it; then you’ll go away and say, Queer old chap; been master of a grammar-school--disappointed--disillusioned; but for all that he was one of ’em.... Well, just as you like. “A hundred yards out of the village we turned the women back. All of a sudden Willie Harverson’s wife sprang forward and kissed him, and then the pent cheer broke out. It was as if for the first time we had all thought clearly what we had begun to do. The wind scattered it, but our hearts rose passionately. We hadn’t spoken coming up through the village; we had started beaten, or at least just to endure as much as men could endure; and now that shout made all the difference. It was arrogant, boastful, young, foolish, victorious. Heigho! You see, we forget all the shouts of the same sort that end in failure: we only remember them when they come off. The other sort are like the revolts that never succeed: they’re revolutions when they do. But then, I suppose we could never endure to remember all our pride and confidence that’s come to nothing.... So the men kissed their wives. I had nobody to kiss--I’ve never been married. I saw Reuben’s rocket rise clear above the gale, and then we started.