Page:Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome - William Morris and Ernest Belfort Bax (1909).djvu/16

2 of very white teeth, and apparently so anxious for their safety that he did not notice that the red cap that he had on his head was falling into the water.

All of a sudden, as the vessel neared them, and while their hearts were leaping with joy at their now certain deliverance, an inconceivable and horrible stench was wafted to them across the waters, and presently to their horror and misery they saw that this was a ship of the dead, the bowing man was a tottering corpse, his red cap a piece of his flesh torn from him by a sea-fowl; his amicable smile was caused by his jaws, denuded of the flesh, showing his white teeth set in a perpetual grin. So passed the ship of the dead into the landless ocean, leaving the poor wretches to their despair.

To us Socialists this Ship of the Dead is an image of the civilisation of our epoch, as the cast-away mariners are of the hopes of the humanity entangled in it. The cheerfully bowing man, whose signs of encouragement and good-feeling turn out to be the results of death and corruption, well betokens to us the much be-praised philanthropy of the rich and