So you're lost, uh? Happens a lot out here. You walk around for days, seeing things, losing your bearings, crying out for God, But He can't hear you. You can scream and scream but nobody'll ever hear you.

The survivor spoke to us though, or tried to. Mumbling through that matted brown beard of his, pale as death itself. I can__ say now if it was weakness from his wounds or what it was _ but we struggled to understand him. In fact we got nothing intelligible from him at all then. He seemed afraid, like any dying man probably would be, but he did seem more terrified than any dying man I__e seen before _ and I__e seen a few in my time. Let me tell you, Corsair or not, he grabbed whatever hand would hold his, and clenched it so tight his knuckles turned white! He kept fading out as we carried him on the stretcher board the medics brought with them. Looking back, I think he tried to warn us, poor bastard. He tried to tell us to leave him behind and go, but we wouldn__ listen. We thought we were better than the Corsairs, remember? We thought we would be all moral and upright and try to help him. __on__ say I didn__ warn you._ were the last words he said before losing consciousness. At least, those that we could make out. At the end of it all, he was right _ as it turned out, we couldn__ even help ourselves.

Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses.

The fate of all things cherished and expensive, to be lost at hazard, and well before their time

And the geography of the thing--the geography of them--was completely and hopelessly wrong.

A basic reality of life is that we all struggle. We hurt and have hurt other people. We all feel lost sometimes. This isn__ all we are, but it is a part of who we are. The only question I have when I__ with someone is, __an they admit it? And will they let me admit it too?