Then a respite came one morning, and a few of us, desperate for air, went out on deck to see what we could, while the captain inspected for damage. I saw it first, and pointed to it—a shredded French flag appeared like a mirage out of the thinning fog, and then the vessel below it off our starboard bow, dismasted and drifting. Part of it already submerged. Soon we were close enough that we could see the sailors’ emaciated faces. There were maybe twenty of them, waving their arms at us, calling out through cupped hands. “Rudder broken! We drift for days! No rations! S’il vous plaît! We starve! Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!”

“We must take them on board,” I said to our English captain.

“We’ve rations barely enough for us, with at least a week more at sea. We sail past, that’s all we can do.”

“I’ll not have it!” I could hear their cries on the wind, fading in and out. “While there is food to eat we’ll share it, and all land safely. All of us live! Take them on board, I demand it.”

“Who are you to tell me how to run my ship?”

“I am the person who will report you first thing upon landing to the maritime office, if you do not take these men on board, now. You would leave them to starve or sink? It’s a floating coffin! They have no rudder!”

“They’re not our countrymen!” he said, now red at his collar.

“They are fellow human beings who need our care.” I turned to see another wave batter their boat, and for three seconds obscure it from view. My desperation fueled my ire. “I will not be a witness to such cruelty! Take them on board, now!”

A handful more of our fellow passengers had scrambled to the deck, plus the parson, the cook, the boatswain among them, watching me fight with the captain, not coming to my aid or his. This, the battle of our two wills. I don’t know where I found the strength to stand such shaky ground, no ground at all, but undulating boards beneath me. We, too, had survived for two weeks on salt beef and hard biscuits, with barely enough ale to wash it down, if we’d the stomach for it, and little sleep. But I knew that once we slipped sight of shore, we became a floating island, unto ourselves, dependent on the integrity of our ship to withstand these beating storms, and the integrity of one another through moments of peace and terror. We make our own society, are responsible one to the other. And those French sailors pleading for their lives: They were us too.