“The ship had driven bows on into a berg nearly as big as a continent, and then slowly slid off again. Nobody was hurt. The men came tumbling out of the deckhouse where they berthed before you could look round. I don’t suppose any of them was asleep, for every one was getting a bit jumpy since we had been among the ice.
“The first thing I saw when I picked myself up was Arnot crawling out of the scuppers with such a comical look of surprise that I had to laugh. Then I saw the Old Man—and the laugh died.
“I shall never forget his face—miserable and yet lifted up both at once, if you understand me, like old what’s-his-name—you know—sacrificing his daughter. There he stood, on the break of the poop, quite calm and collected, seeing to the swinging out of the boats, and making sure that they had food and water. Then at the last he went back to the chart-room to fetch the ship’s papers.
“He sighed once, and looked round—a long look as if he were saying good-bye to it all in his heart. He let his hand rest on her rail for a minute, and I saw his lips move as if he were speaking to himself. Then he sighed again, and went in.
“The ship settled down very fast. We waited five minutes—ten minutes. I began to feel uneasy and went along to see what was detaining him. I glanced into the chart-room. He was sitting by the table: I could see his grey head—the hair getting a bit thin on top—just as I’d seen it scores of times. Nothing wrong that I could see....
“Fifteen minutes—twenty—I shoved my head in to tell him the boat was waiting....
“But I never got him told.... He must have had some sort of a stroke—evidently when he was going to make a last entry in the log, for the book lay open before him. I wonder what he was going to write in it. I wonder! Ah, well, no one will ever know that but his Maker.
“He was still breathing when we got him into the boat, but it was plain to see that no Board of Trade inquiry would ever trouble him.
“We only just pulled away from the ship in time. She went down quite steadily, on a perfectly even keel. I suppose her cargo—she was loaded right down to her marks—helped to keep her upright. She just settled quietly down, with a little shiver now and then like a person stepping into cold water. Her sails kept her up a little until they were soaked through. She looked—oh, frightfully like a drowning woman! The fog shut down like a curtain just at the finish, and the last I saw of her was like a white drowning hand thrown up out of the water. I was glad from my heart the Old Man couldn’t see her. It was bad enough for me—a young fellow with all the world before me. I tell you, the salt on my cheeks wasn’t all sea water! What it would have been like for him——
“He was dead by the time a steamer picked us up, twelve hours later, and we buried him the same day, not many miles from the place where the old ‘Maid of Athens’ went down.