personal exclusion grew to an interest tinged with curiosity.

The interest continued, but when his silence became irksome to her she
said so very frankly. His absent eyes, still clouded, met hers,
unsmiling.

"I hate the sea," he said.

"You--hate it!" she repeated, too incredulous to be disappointed.

"There's no rest in it; it tires. A man who plays with it must be on his
guard every second. To spend a lifetime on it is ridiculous--a whole life
of intelligent effort, against perpetual, brutal, inanimate resistance--
one endless uninterrupted fight--a ceaseless human manoeuvre against
senseless menace; and then the counter attack of the lifeless monster,
the bellowing advance, the shock--and no battle won--nothing final,
nothing settled, no! only the same eternal nightmare of surveillance,
the same sleepless watch for stupid treachery."

"But--you don't have to fight it!" she said, astonished.

"No; but it is no secret--what it does to those who do. . Some escape;
but only by dying ashore before it gets them. That is the way some of us
reach Heaven; we die too quick for the Enemy to catch us."

He was laughing when she said: "It is not a fight with the sea; it is
the battle of Life itself you mean."

"Yes, in a way, the battle of Life."