He had lost two years
and all the money he had ventured. He was going back to the place he
had come from, and he was carrying with him a sense of having been used
hardly by fortune, and in a way he had not deserved.
He had gone out to the West with the intention of working hard and using
his hands as well as his brains; he had not been squeamish; he had, in
fact, laboured like a ploughman; and to be obliged to give in had been
galling and bitter. There are human beings into whose consciousness of
themselves the possibility of being beaten does not enter. This man was
one of them.
The ship was of the huge and luxuriously-fitted class by which the rich
and fortunate are transported from one continent to another. Passengers
could indulge themselves in suites of rooms and live sumptuously. As the
man leaning on the rail looked on, he saw messengers bearing baskets and
boxes of fruit and flowers with cards and notes attached, hurrying up
the gangway to deliver them to waiting stewards. These were the farewell
offerings to be placed in staterooms, or to await their owners on the
saloon tables. Salter--the second-class passenger's name was Salter--had
seen a few such offerings before on the first crossing.
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