“They came up, the fish-wives of the quay--the women who swear so--they turned out with the men; men and women, there were enough to carry the boat and us with it. Three boats had managed to keep head-up the whole of the day--you know that--and the _Lizzie_ was one of them. The shouts and lanterns were bewildering, and I heard a fellow give a shout of recognition to Osa Couper. We turned into the street that leads to the movable bridge over the river. The river’s tidal, of course, and there was a beach of mud and pebbles; and the Portsannet men fought for places as we put her in. She danced on the water again, and they pulled down the river. We trooped across the bridge to the boat-house. They were jacketed, and had fresh oars by the time we caught them up, and the sea was bursting on the sea-wall with tremendous shocks. They got out the very first time.... “You know how many they saved? Frank and another man and a lad from the _Lizzie_, and seven from a barque, and six from a Lowestoft boat. We saw them all in, and then they wanted us to go to bed. ‘Why should we go to bed?’ we said. We didn’t want to go to bed. I went to bed sometime the next day, but it wasn’t till the following night that I slept--not to call sleeping.... Nunan, they said, was worse than I; the horses, perhaps, though they got them the next day but one, all but two....” His eyes were half closed, and we prepared to leave him: he opened them again, hearing us move. “I want to know if you can tell me something before you go,” he said; “it’s often puzzled me. I can tell you in half a minute. It’s this: If you were to ask me whether I thought my own life worth such and such a vast deal of labour,--the risk of other lives too, maybe,--I think I should have to say, No. At any rate, it would be a question of balance, value for value, and so on, you see. And I know other men think the same. But as soon as it’s a question of anybody else’s life, the case seems to be different. John Broadwood would have jumped up just the same if Frank Martin had been the biggest rapscallion who ever handled a net. Now where’s the sense in it? I’m not saying there isn’t any; I’m asking. I went too. I’d have gone in the boat, but it would have kept a better man out of a place; and I ask myself the reason of it all. It isn’t reason--can’t be; and yet reasonable men will do it. ‘Thank God for that,’ you say. Well, that’s unanswerable too.... I see you can’t help me. I’ve been asking such questions all my life, and shall go on, I suppose, till the end now.... I’m very tired.... Good-night....” _Printed by The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._ End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back o' the Moon, by Oliver Onions