The ship had given us up, but was still cruising,
if haply it might light upon some token of our perishing,--
an oar or a lance pole.
CHAPTER 49
The Hyena
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed
affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast
practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns,
and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing.
He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions,
all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby;
as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints.
And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden
disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself,
seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches
in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.
That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man
only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst
of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him
a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.
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