Colonel tried to steer the conversation back onto a more useful track: “I’d lay a wager that the other lifeboat was hit in the fog by a passing ship and sank without being seen,” he said. “If its occupants had been rescued, one of them would have mentioned us, regardless of Blake’s thoughts on the matter.”
“Wouldn’t the ship have felt the collision? Surely they would have known they’d run into something and tried to find out what it was,” said Mrs. McCain, while Mrs. Cook, who had been so vocal in the beginning, looked on like someone in a trance.
Hardie refused to comment on our interpretation of things. All he would say was “Maybe” or “Maybe not” when asked his opinion directly. Eventually Mrs. Grant said, “All this talk of being rescued, as if everything depends on someone else. I say we plot a course and set about trying to rescue ourselves,” which gave me a momentary burst of hilarious hope. It was so simple and obvious that I wondered why no one had mentioned it before. The inescapable fact was that we hadn’t been rescued, so there seemed to be no reason now to stay in the vicinity of the wreck.
“Of course!” I exclaimed out loud, and others took up the cry: “God helps those who help themselves!” It was a principle I lived by, and while it sometimes might make a person who espoused it seem selfish and theologically uninformed, people who refused to live by it looked, to me, weak and parasitic. When the sun had first broken through the fog, I had been reluctant to face it, having grown accustomed to taking refuge in the night, in limited vision; and those crystal days where we could see forever, at least until the world curved and dropped off into nothingness, haunted me, because there was nothing to see. But now that we had a plan, I was glad to be able to see as far as the horizon because it gave us a destination—west!
God helps those who help themselves, I said over and over to myself, exactly the way I had said it to Felicity Close the time she came to see me. She had followed Henry one day, which is how she knew where I lived. She was well dressed, but she lacked airs, and I thought we might have been friends if we hadn’t been rivals. I told her that we were both practical people and that practicality must prevail, but mostly I just listened. One of the things she told me was that Henry was steeped in traditions I couldn’t hope to understand and that once he had come to his senses, she feared, he would mourn their loss. She also said, “This is very out of character for him. Henry is not rash or passionate in the least,” and I wondered if we were talking about the same man. She had her say and left, and while I felt sorry for her, I could see that I had freed Henry, both from tradition and from emotional restraint, which was something the upright Felicity would never have been able to do. It was this realization that took away any feelings of guilt I might have had.
Mrs. Grant kept a constant vigil. She was dressed entirely in black. Her hair was pulled severely back, and even a week of wind and waves was not enough to loosen it from its fastenings. Her gaze did not waver in the face of nothingness. Her face burned. Then the skin peeled off and she turned a dark brown color; and still she gazed out to sea. I had the idea that if a ship appeared on the horizon after all this time, it would be because she had drawn it to her by her sheer determination and the force of her will. I could see the effect she was having on some of the others, who would make excuses to move near her or touch her shoulder as she went about her duties. I saw this and I think I understood it, but still I looked to Hardie as the foundation of my strength.
Hardie’s continued belief was that it was wise to stay in the vicinity of the place where the ship had gone down and from which the distress signals had been sent and also where we had heard the foghorn, but Mrs. Grant had made a
“Wouldn’t the ship have felt the collision? Surely they would have known they’d run into something and tried to find out what it was,” said Mrs. McCain, while Mrs. Cook, who had been so vocal in the beginning, looked on like someone in a trance.
Hardie refused to comment on our interpretation of things. All he would say was “Maybe” or “Maybe not” when asked his opinion directly. Eventually Mrs. Grant said, “All this talk of being rescued, as if everything depends on someone else. I say we plot a course and set about trying to rescue ourselves,” which gave me a momentary burst of hilarious hope. It was so simple and obvious that I wondered why no one had mentioned it before. The inescapable fact was that we hadn’t been rescued, so there seemed to be no reason now to stay in the vicinity of the wreck.
“Of course!” I exclaimed out loud, and others took up the cry: “God helps those who help themselves!” It was a principle I lived by, and while it sometimes might make a person who espoused it seem selfish and theologically uninformed, people who refused to live by it looked, to me, weak and parasitic. When the sun had first broken through the fog, I had been reluctant to face it, having grown accustomed to taking refuge in the night, in limited vision; and those crystal days where we could see forever, at least until the world curved and dropped off into nothingness, haunted me, because there was nothing to see. But now that we had a plan, I was glad to be able to see as far as the horizon because it gave us a destination—west!
God helps those who help themselves, I said over and over to myself, exactly the way I had said it to Felicity Close the time she came to see me. She had followed Henry one day, which is how she knew where I lived. She was well dressed, but she lacked airs, and I thought we might have been friends if we hadn’t been rivals. I told her that we were both practical people and that practicality must prevail, but mostly I just listened. One of the things she told me was that Henry was steeped in traditions I couldn’t hope to understand and that once he had come to his senses, she feared, he would mourn their loss. She also said, “This is very out of character for him. Henry is not rash or passionate in the least,” and I wondered if we were talking about the same man. She had her say and left, and while I felt sorry for her, I could see that I had freed Henry, both from tradition and from emotional restraint, which was something the upright Felicity would never have been able to do. It was this realization that took away any feelings of guilt I might have had.
Mrs. Grant kept a constant vigil. She was dressed entirely in black. Her hair was pulled severely back, and even a week of wind and waves was not enough to loosen it from its fastenings. Her gaze did not waver in the face of nothingness. Her face burned. Then the skin peeled off and she turned a dark brown color; and still she gazed out to sea. I had the idea that if a ship appeared on the horizon after all this time, it would be because she had drawn it to her by her sheer determination and the force of her will. I could see the effect she was having on some of the others, who would make excuses to move near her or touch her shoulder as she went about her duties. I saw this and I think I understood it, but still I looked to Hardie as the foundation of my strength.
Hardie’s continued belief was that it was wise to stay in the vicinity of the place where the ship had gone down and from which the distress signals had been sent and also where we had heard the foghorn, but Mrs. Grant had made a
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