Why does Stephen Crane end this story with the men interpreting nature?

The last paragraph encapsulates what I believe is the main point of Crane's story: the randomness of nature and of the outside forces to which man is subject.
In the boat, the men seem to be questioning the meaning of what they are going through:

As for the thoughts of the men, there was a great deal of anger in them. They might be summed up this way: "If I am going to lose my life to the sea—why was I allowed to come this far to see sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to taste the holy food of life?"

The men are inwardly baffled by the fact that their plight is the result of chance. Yet their outward behavior is that of resignation. None of them panic; to one another, they appear to accept the randomness of their fate. The last paragraph indicates that, once safe (except for the dead man), they come to an understanding of the vastness of nature and its indifference to them, as "the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on the shore [...]." There is, finally, a bonding of sorts between them and the outside forces that could have destroyed them all.