A long heavy boat lay at the Bellevue wharf. In the bow sat half a dozen paupers, who started up now and then to range the coffins that came in wheelbarrow loads from a little brick building near the wharf.
A name was marked rudely in chalk upon the lid of each coffin, and this was all that those who brought them knew or cared about the senseless forms they carried. Out from that brick house, and along the wharf, they were trundled amid a swarm of loungers, who helped eagerly to lower them into the boat.
It was the harvest time of death at Bellevue, and those pine coffins were garnered by tens and twenties each day. That morning the weight of twenty-four human forms, all breathing souls fifteen hours before, sunk that stout boat to the water's edge.
When the last coffin came alone upon the handbarrow, Crofts accompanied it, followed by two little girls. With his own hands he helped to lower that coffin into the boat, and those paupers who could read saw Jane Chester's name chalked upon the lid. As Crofts settled his burden gently down across an empty seat, a faint odor of flowers stole through the crevices, and when the rude sail cloth was flung carelessly over the rest, he laid a strip of clean, coarse linen over this coffin, then clambering across to the man who sat with the helm in his hand, he imparted some directions to him in a low voice.
"What, up to Randall's Island! Take those two children in the boat there and back to the nurseries! It can't be done, I tell you," said the man, sulkily. "I won't do it without the Superintendent's order, nor then either, if I can help myself."
"Oh, let us go with her—pray take us!" cried Mary Fuller, who was anxiously watching the man, while Isabel bent over the wharf, her hands hanging down, and her eyes full of helpless woe.
The pauper captain neither heeded the pleading cry of Mary Fuller, or the more touching look of the orphan—and to all the humane arguments of Crofts he turned a deaf ear. At length Crofts found a means of persuasion more potent than tears or words. He took from his pocket four twists of coarse tobacco, which the captain received with a grin. Hiding the treasure under his seat, he cast a sharp glance over the pile of coffins to assure himself that the transfer had not been observed by the men in the bow.
"Holloa, there, stop crying and jump in if you want to go!" cried the man, addressing the children; "make room in the bow, will you—we have got to leave these children at the nurseries as we come back."
Crofts lifted the little girls into the boat, sat them gently down in the shadow of Mrs. Chester's coffin, and went back to the hospital.
"Give way, all hands!" cried the captain, seizing the helm. "Pull a strong oar, boys, or the tide will turn agin us!"