I am friendless here, I am penniless; and worst of all, if I
even get a passage home, there will be no home left. Too late! too late!
What use is there in striving?"
Tears stood in his blue eyes, which were gentle as a lady's; and his
forehead (usually calm and smooth and ready for the flicker of a very
pleasant smile) was as grave and determined as the brow of Caryl Carne.
Captain Van Oort would have lent him 500 guilders with the greatest
pleasure, but Scudamore would not take more than fifty, to support him
until he could obtain a ship. Then with hearty good-will, and life-long
faith in each other, the two men parted, and Scudamore's heart was
uncommonly low--for a substance that was not a "Jack-in-the-box"--as he
watched from the shore the slow fading into dream-land of the Katterina.
Nothing except patriotic feeling may justify a man, who has done no
harm, in long-continued misery. The sense of violent bodily pain, or of
perpetual misfortune, or of the baseness of all in whom he trusted, and
other steady influx of many-fountained sorrow, may wear him for a time,
and even fetch his spirit lower than the more vicarious woe can do. But
the firm conviction that the family of man to which one belongs, and
is proud of belonging, has fallen into the hands of traitors, eloquent
liars, and vile hypocrites, and cannot escape without crawling in the
dust--this produces a large deep gloom, and a crushing sense of doom
beyond philosophy.
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