Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/90

70 York. We were evidently in frequented seas, and land could not be far off. How I longed to reach it!

Night closed in about half-past seven. As the sun sank below the horizon, the moon grew brighter and for some time hung shining in the heavens. A prayer meeting, held by Captain Anderson, interspersed with hymns, lasted until nine o'clock. The day passed without either Captain Corsican or myself receiving a visit from Drake's seconds.

next day, Monday, the 8th of April, the weather was very fine. I found the Doctor on deck basking in the sun. He came up to me. "Ah well!" said he, "our poor sufferer died in the night. The doctor never gave him up—oh, those doctors! they will never give in. This is the fourth man we have lost since we left Liverpool, the forth gone towards paying the Great Eastern's debt."

"Poor fellow," said I, "just as we are nearing port, and the American coast almost in sight. What will become of his widow and little children?"

"Would you have it otherwise, my dear sir? It is the law, the great law! we must die! We must give way to others. It is my opinion we die simply because we are occupying a place which by rights belongs to another. Now can you tell me how many people will have died during my existence if I live to be sixty?"

"I have no idea, Doctor."

"The calculation is simple enough," resumed Dean Pitferge. "If I live sixty years, I shall have been in the world 21,900 days, or 525,600 hours, or 31,536,000 minutes, or lastly, 1,892,160,000 seconds, in round numbers 2,000,000,000 seconds. Now in that time two thousand million individuals who were in the way of their successors will have died, and when I have become inconvenient, I shall be put out of the way in the same manner, so that the long and short of the matter is to put off becoming inconvenient as long as possible."

The Doctor continued for some time arguing on this subject, tending to prove to me a very simple theory, the