"Isn't it in the spirit we have the really great adventures?"
Meade studied him curiously. "You mean that the most thrilling
adventures are those we only dream about, but which never happen?"
"I didn't mean exactly that, for they do happen. What I meant was that
to try your body was nothing, but to try your soul--try it to the
utmost--there would be something."
"To risk it or try it?" asked Meade.
"Oh, to try it only. To risk it, would not that be sinful?"
Cadogan's instinctive liking for Lavis had led him from the beginning
of the voyage to take a keen interest in whatever he might do or say;
but until to-night he had found him a most unobtrusive and taciturn man.
He had a feeling that this man, who before to-night had barely said more
than good morning and good night to him, understood him much better than
did Meade, the professional observer, who was forever questioning him.
The answer to Meade's last question stirred him particularly, because he
felt that it was meant, not for Meade, but for himself.
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?"