The officers embraced one another and exchanged words of delight.

The Kohen, after embracing all the others, turned to me, and, forgetting my foreign ways, exclaimed, in a tone of enthusiastic delight, "We are destroyed! Death is near! Rejoice!" Accustomed as I was to the perils of the sea, I had learned to face death without flinching.

Almah, too, was calm, for to her this death seemed preferable to that darker fate which awaited us; but the words of the Kohen jarred upon my feelings.
"Do you not intend to do anything to save the ship ?" I asked.
He laughed joyously.
"There's no occasion," said he.

"When the oars are taken in we always begin to rejoice.

And why not?
Death is near--it is almost certain.
Why should we do anything to distract our minds and mar our joy?
For oh, dear friend, the glorious time has come when we can give up life--life, with all its toils, its burdens, its endless bitternesses, its perpetual evils.