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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: Hong Kong. Then the game was up; as soon as they set foot on
board, they would be seized; the wreck would be examined, the
blood found, the lagoon perhaps dredged, and the bodies of the
dead would reappear to testify. An impulse almost
incontrollable bade Carthew rise from the thwart, shriek out
aloud, and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing to
dissemble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin out some
hundred seconds more of agonised suspense, with shame and
death thus visibly approaching. But the indomitable Wicks
persevered. His face was like a skull, his voice scarce
recognisable; the dullest of men and officers (it seemed) must
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