Any effort, by which such an evasion can be accom-
plished, must be as sudden as the danger which it
affronts. Even that, even the' sickening necessity for
hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined
to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of
too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipa-
tion — even that anguish is liable to a hideous exas-
peration in one particular case, namely, where the
agonizing appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct
of self-preservation, but to the conscience on behalf of
another life besides your own, accidentally cast upon
your protection. To fail, to collapse in a service
merely your own, might seem comparatively venial ;
though, in fact, it is far from venial. But to fail in a
case where Providence has suddenly thrown into your
hands the final interests of another — of aT fellow-crea-
ture shuddering between the gates of life and death ;
this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would mingle
the misery of an atrocious criminality with the misery
of a bloody calamity. The man is called upon, too
probably, to die ; but to die at the very moment when,



176 THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH.
by any momentary collapse, he is self-denounced as a
murderer. He had but the twinkling of an eye for his
effort, and that effort might, at the best, have been
unavailing ; but from this shadow of a chance, small
or great, how if he has recoiled by a treasonable
Idchete 7 The effort might have been without hope ;
but to have risen to the level of that effort, would have
rescued him, though not from dying, yet from dying as
a traitor to his duties.
