ved the sea upon our backs to prevent it from swamping the
boat; that one party was always kept baling, and that every hat and cap
among us soon got worn out, though patched up fifty times, as the only
vessels we had for that service; that another party lay down in the
bottom of the boat, while a third rowed; and that we were soon all in
boils and blisters and rags.

The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to all of us that I
used to wonder whether, if we were saved, the time could ever come when
the survivors in this boat of ours could be at all indifferent to the
fortunes of the survivors in that. We got out a tow-rope whenever the
weather permitted, but that did not often happen, and how we two parties
kept within the same horizon, as we did, He, who mercifully permitted it
to be so for our consolation, only knows. I never shall forget the looks
with which, when the morning light came, we used to gaze about us over
the stormy waters, for the other boat. We once parted company for
seventy-two hours, and we believed them to have gone down, as they did
us. The joy on both sides when we came within view of one another again,
had something in a manner Divine in it; each was so forgetful of
individual suffering, in tears of delight and sympathy for the people in
the other boat.

I have been wanting to get round to the individual or personal part of my
subject, as I call it, and the foregoing incident puts me in the right
way. The patience and good disposition aboard of us, was wonderful. I
was not surprised by it in the women; for all men born of women know what
great qualities they will show when men will fail; but, I own I was a
little surprised by it in some of the men. Among one-and-thirty people
assembled at the best of times, there will usually, I should say, be two
or three uncertain tempers. I knew that I had more than one rough temper
with me among my own people, for I had chosen those for the Long-boat
that I might have them under my eye. But, they softe

John Holland Rose (1855-1942) was an influential English historian who wrote a famous biography of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and also wrote a history of Europe, entitled The Development of the European Nations. Rose was the basis for C. P. Snows fictional character M. H. L. Gay (see Years of Hope: Cambridge, Colonial Administrator in the South Seas, and Cricket by Philip Snow.)

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