"Well, Jasper, is there any news?"
"There was a ship wrecked on Dead Man's Rock last night, but they've not found anything except—"
"What was it called?"
"The Mary Jane—that is—I don't quite know."
Up to this time I had forgotten that mother would want to know about my doings that morning. As an ordinary thing, of course I should have told her whatever I had seen or heard, but my terror of the Captain and the awful consequences of saying too much now flashed upon me with hideous force. I had heard about the Mary Jane from the unhappy John. What if I had already said too much? I bent over my breakfast in confusion.
After a dreadful pause, during which I felt, though I could not see, the astonishment in my mother's eyes, she said—
"You don't quite know?"
"No; I think it must have been the Mary Jane, but there was a strange sailor picked up. Uncle Loveday found him, and he seemed to be a foreigner, and he said—I mean—I thought—it was the name, but—"
This was worse and worse. Again at my wits' end, I tried to go on with my breakfast. After awhile I looked up, and saw my mother watching me with a look of mingled surprise and reproach.
"Was this sailor the only one saved?"