Part 54

Thinking of Meade, who was a famous author and journalist, Cadogan said hesitatingly and shyly: "I've often thought I'd like to be a writer." He meant that for Lavis, but it was Meade who took it to himself to ask him why.

"If I were a writer, I'd have hope right now of taking part in one of the greatest adventures that could befall a man."

"Where, Cadogan?"

"Right aboard this ship. How? Here we are tearing through the iceberg country trying to make a record. If ever we piled up head on to one of those icebergs, where would we be?"

"But it is a clear night. And the lookouts."

"Never mind the clear night--or the lookouts if they are not looking out."

"But this ship can't sink."

"No? But suppose she can sink, and that she is sinking. There are four thousand people aboard--and down she goes. Wouldn't that be an experience?"

With meditative eyes directed down to the ashes at the end of his cigar, Meade mulled over the question. "A great adventure it surely would be," he at length emitted from behind a puff of smoke. "The right man, a great writer, for instance, if he could live through that, would make a world's epic of it."

Cadogan wondered what the man on the transom was thinking of. He put his next question directly to him. "There would be some great deaths in such an event, don't you think, sir?" His own eyes were glowing.

"Some great deaths, surely--and some horrible ones, doubtless, too."

"Oh, but men would die like gods at such a time!"

"No doubt--and like dogs also."

Meade did not relish losing control of the conversation to an undistinguished outsider. "Look here, Cadogan," he interjected; "could a man live through that--go down with the ship and survive?"

"He could survive the sinking--yes; but he would not live long--not in water near icebergs. The numbness soon creeps up to your heart, and then----"

"But how could a man do it and live?"

"Why, sir, do you insist that he should live?" It was Lavis who had spoken.

Meade's eyebrows rose above the tops of his horn glasses. "Eh!" Cadogan, too, stared at Lavis.

"To live after it would be only to half complete the adventure. We began by speaking of an adventure in the spirit. To make a real, a great adventure of it, should not the man die?"

Meade now smiled with obvious tolerance. "But a man dead and buried in the depths of the sea!"

"That would only be his body, and we were speaking of an adventure of the spirit--of the soul. The man should experience every physical dread, every nervous fear, every emotional horror of those last few minutes, share the bitterness of the disillusionment inevitable when three or four thousand ordinary, every-day human beings are dying in despair, because, as they would judge it, dying so needlessly. To get the full measure of it, and to share also in the sweetness and resignation of great souls in the hour of death, would not his mortal body have to meet death, even as the others?"

Meade readjusted his horned spectacles. He would have to revise his notes of the man, that was plain. Forty, or forty-five possibly, he was. Tall and large-framed, but spare, thin-cheeked, and hollow-templed, with white streaks among the close-clipped, very black, and very thick hair which showed from under his cap. A worn-looking man, a student. M-m--he had him now--a teacher of the classics in some college, possibly a young women's college.

"To get back to our steamer and your extraordinary proposition," suggested Meade; "you say that the man should actually die?"

"Surely die. And he should face death even as our highly vitalized young friend here faces life. Mr. Cadogan, coming back to us from perilous experiences, makes us share with him in every tremor, every dread, every thought he himself felt in his adventure. And how does he manage to do that? Isn't it because in the perilous moment his soul remains tranquil? If death comes, well and good--it cannot be helped; if not, then a glorious adventure. He meets danger with every faculty keyed up to the highest. Now, if a man would meet his death, as this steamer went down, in the same mood, would he not march into the shadows with a soul ennobled?"

"And then what?"

"Then? If we are heirs in spirit even as in body will God ever allow a great spirit to become extinct?"

Meade abandoned his young-ladies'-teacher supposition. He speared the man with another glance. "Pardon me, you are not a scientist?"

Lavis smiled--for the first time. "Do I talk like one?"