There were other last words spoken while the little boat was being held to the ship’s side with all the energy of despair. Mr. Munro, a passenger, had made up his mind to try the faint chance of escape which entering the cutter afforded. All felt that escape was next to impossible, and Mr. Munro among the rest. Before leaving the vessel, however, he went down to the cabin where were some friends of his from Ballarat, Mr. and Mrs. Hickman and their young family. It was a terrible task even to make the proposition that he had come to make known: it was that there was room in the boat for one! It was impossible that the poor children could escape; not one of them could be expected to take the fearful leap required; nor could Mrs. Hickman; but her husband,—he could escape, perhaps, if he would, and if the boat did live out the fearful sea, he might be saved. Mr. Munro urged his friend to avail himself of the chance.
But no! Mr. Hickman had no need to look at his wife and four little ones, around whom the water was rapidly rising higher and higher, ere he gave the answer. The water was then a considerable depth in the saloon on the lee side, as the fond husband and tender father replied to his friend’s entreaty thus:—“No! I promised my wife and children to stay by them, and I will do so!” Brave determination, one never to be regretted by him who made it, never to be forgotten while tales of heroism have any power left in them to move human hearts to enthusiasm and tears. His choice, though a melancholy, was the right one, and his friend acted kindly in not further attempting to divert him from it.
“Help me,” said Mr. Hickman, “to move the children to the other side, out of the water.”
Mr. Munro performed this last act of kindness for his friends: they then shook hands. The last words of that fond father were, “Good bye, Jack!”
His friend then left him for ever. But will he ever lose,—alas! alas! will any one who reads the story ever lose sight of the vision of that loving father and mother, with their four children, standing in a row to the windward side of the saloon, and thus momentarily expecting death!
Peace, poor weeping mother and devoted father! Peace, ye dear helpless children! There is One on high whose voice of love is mightier than the voice of many waters, and we humbly hope that those parents, with many others in a similar position of peril, passed through the sharpness of death into His presence, who would smile upon them a welcome, the first glance of which would for ever banish the remembrance of pain, as they cried, “Behold us, and the children thou hast given us!”
But there were more last words yet. Upon seeing Mr. Munro return alone, the men in the boat shouted to him, “There is still room: fetch a lady!” Hearing this, he sprang across a portion of the deck in quest of a lady whom he knew; but not seeing her, and knowing that the moments were flying fast, he said to a young girl, “Will you go?” She appeared willing to do so, and Mr. Munro immediately caught her in his arms, and hurried with her to the bulwarks; but when she looked over and saw the distance she had to leap, she said, in an agony of despair, “Oh, I cannot do that!”
The boat seemed every moment as if it would go down amid the terrific roll of the sea, and she drew back in affright from the awful gulf that appeared yawning to receive her. Mr. Munro was obliged to drop his hapless burden, and to leave the young creature on the deck, while he himself leaped from the bulwarks into the rolling boat below.
There was one young man on board, in whose spiritual welfare a clergyman in the suburbs of London had taken deep interest before he embarked on his fatal voyage. The young man had remained undecided for Christ, notwithstanding all entreaties and appeals; but ere he went on board the London his friend the clergyman had implored him to offer up daily a prayer which he had given him. Neither, perhaps, could have possibly dreamed of the circumstances of peril under which that prayer would come to be used. There came now some last words from that young man. Amid the raging of the storm, he shouted out to one who was in the boat—“If ever you get safe to land, tell Mr. —— (mentioning the clergyman’s name) that the prayer he gave me I have used every day since; and that now I can say of Christ, ‘My Beloved is mine, and I am His.’” These were his last words; but how much happier—brief though they were—have they made many a Christian heart, telling, as we humbly hope they do, that the speaker had escaped the second death, and that the haven of eternal rest was in sight.
There was a young girl on board whose last words were not spoken, but written. Was she the one of whom we read as standing bareheaded in the wild storm, with holy resignation depicted in every feature? She hurriedly wrote a few words on a slip of paper, and said to one who was about to leap into the boat, “Give this to my mother.” Her last wish was sacredly obeyed, and there came to a mourning mother this serene message from one who had gone down in a stormy sea—“Dear mother, you must not grieve for me: I am going to Jesus.”