After two years of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so well known to hisimagination, found them strangely barren of adventure.

He made many voyages. He knew the magicmonotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions ofthe sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread-but whose only reward is in theperfect love of the work.

This reward eluded him. Yet he could not go back, because there isnothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

Besides, his prospects weregood. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time,when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by thoseevents of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, andthe fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, notonly to others but also to himself.Only once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in the anger of the sea.

Thattruth is not so often made apparent as people might think.

There are many shades in the danger ofadventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinisterviolence of intention-that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of aman, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purposeof malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of himhis hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, todestroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless andnecessary-the sunshine, the memories, the future; which means to sweep the whole precious worldutterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life.