With a sob and a
curse, Fenton struck the man full in the face with all his force,
sending the brute reeling backward into the crowd which was too dense
to allow of his falling. The mother hurriedly pulled the child into the
dense stream of people crowding toward the boats, and Fenton saw the
pair disappear over the side of the steamer, helped by one of the
officers.
There ran through his mind a momentary speculation of their chances of
escape, and the thought brought him back to the consideration of his
own situation. A sudden unreasonable disgust of the conditions which
made his salvation so improbable seized upon him. He reflected that he
might still baffle fate by taking his own life, and for an instant the
idea of thus escaping from all the vexations which surrounded him
presented itself to his mind in alluring colors. The idea of self-
destruction was one with which he had played so often that he
entertained it without a shock; and he realized now, almost with a
conviction that the fact forced him to suicide for the sake of
consistency, that his death under these circumstances would surely be
attributed to accident. He even began to fumble with the buckles of his
life-preserver; then with a smile of bitter scorn he looked down at his
hands, of which the fingers were trembling with nervous fear.
"Bah," he said to himself, "why should I pose to myself? Fate is too
much for me; if a gentle and beneficent Providence intends to make away
with me, so be it.
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