Higgs, put yourself in my position.

Imagine yourself with nothing and no one left to care for except a single child, and that child stolen away from you by savages.
Imagine yourself, after years of search, hearing his very voice, seeing his very face, adult now, but the same, the thing you had dreamed of and desired for years; that for which you would have given a thousand lives if you could have had time to think.

And then the rush of the howling, fantastic mob, the breakdown of courage, of love, of everything that is noble under the pressure of primaeval instinct, which has but one song--Save your life.

Lastly, imagine this coward saved, dwelling within a few miles of the son whom he had deserted, and yet utterly unable to rescue or even to communicate with him because of the poltroonery of those among whom he had refuged." "Well," grunted Higgs, "I have imagined all that high-faluting lot.

What of it?
If you mean that you are to blame, I don't agree with you.
You wouldn't have helped your son by getting your own throat cut, and perhaps his also." "I don't know," I answered.