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EPILOGUE
Now that it is all over, I am sometimes assailed by little whispering doubts — a very slight murmuring, as of a conscience awakening too late and faintly suggesting that this and that might have been done to turn aside the hand of fate. It is then that I wonder whether I ought to have foreseen the catastrophe and taken steps to avert it; whether I ought to have realised that we were in for a slump which would probably be only temporary and might have been better met by heaving-to and trying to ride out the storm in inactivity, or even running before the wind under bare poles.
In other words, ought I, much earlier, to have disbanded the stock -company I was so proud of, and laid off the staff who had always been so loyal to me, and just sat down and waited for better times? I don't know. I don't know. The onset of the trouble was so desperately gradual and we were so involved in new ventures, which would have been very difficult to abandon before the necessity for doing so became clear and indisputable, that I cannot tell whether to blame myself or not. Even after the event, when it is proverbially so much easier to be wise, I still cannot see where there was a false step which should have been avoided.
Did I devote too much thought to my yachting and allow my eyes to stray from the danger threatening on land? Ought I now to be adapting the old lament: 'Had I but served my job as I have served my ship, it would not have brought my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.'
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