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Yet, there was something else about our man that kept our thoughts on him, and which keeps our thoughts on him still. He was there, in the essential, classic circumstance. Man in nature. The man in the water. For its part, nature cared nothing about the five passengers. Our man, on the other hand, cared totally. So the age-old battle began again in the Potomac. For as long as that man could last, they went at each other, nature and man; the one making no distinctions of good and evil, acting on no principles, offering no lifelines; the other acting wholly on distinctions, principles and, perhaps, on faith.
然而，关于我们的这位英雄，还有其他的原因使我们时刻想着他，至今仍然不能忘怀。在那生死攸关、最典型的环境中，我们看见了他，这个身处自然中的人，这个深陷水中的人。对自然界来说，它并不在意这五个乘客的生命。而相反，我们的英雄则非常在意。因此，古老的战争在波托马克河重演。只要人类还有最后一口气，人类与大自然的斗争就不会结束；一方不分善与恶，不讲原则，拒绝给予生还的希望；而另一方则明辨是非、遵守原则，或者凭自身的信仰行事。
Since it was he who lost the fight, we ought to come again to the conclusion that people are powerless in the world. In reality, we believe the opposite, and it takes the act of the man in the water to remind us of our true feelings in the matter. It is not to say that everyone would have acted as he did, or as did Usher, Windsor and Skutnik. Yet whatever moved these men to challenge death on behalf of their fellows is not peculiar to them. Everyone feels the possibility in himself. That is the enduring wonder of the story. That is why we would not let go of it. If the man in the water gave a lifeline to the people gasping for survival, he was likewise giving a lifeline to those who watched him.
由于战败的一方是这位“水中人”，我们按说应该得出这一结论：人类面对自然界无能为力。事实上，我们却相信与之相反的结论，而“水中人”的壮举唤醒了我们对人的能量的真实感受。这并不是说我们每个人都可能会效仿“水中人”，或者是仿效厄舍、温莎或是斯库特尼克。然而，无论是何种力量驱使这些英雄代表人类与死亡相抗争，这种力量并非他们所独有。我个人都感觉到自己身上隐藏着这种可能性。这就是这个故事的恒久魅力之所在。这就是为什么我们不能忘怀这件事的缘故。如果“水中人”给了渴望生存的人一根救生索的话，他同样也给了那些看着他的人一根救生索。
