"Didn't desert the poor things?"
"Couldn't if I'd tried; they clung to me like a swarm of bees. 'Gad, sir, that was hard lines! to have all the pretty women one had waltzed with every evening through the Trades, and the little children one had been making playthings for, holding round one's knees, and screaming to the doctor to save them. And how the —— was I to save them, sir?" cried Tom, with a sudden burst of feeling, which, as in so many Englishmen, exploded in anger to avoid melting in tears.
"Ought to be a law against it, sir," growled the Lieutenant; "against women-folk and children going to sea. It's murder and cruelty. I've been wrecked, scores of times; but it was with honest men, who could shift for themselves, and if they were drowned, drowned; but didn't screech and catch hold—I couldn't stand that! Well?"
"Well, there was a pretty little creature, an officer's widow, and two children. I caught her under one arm, and one of the children under the other;—said 'I can't take you all at once; I'll come back for the rest, one by one.'—Not that I believed it; but anything to stop the screaming; and I did hope to put some of them out of the reach of the sea, if I could get them forward. I knew the forecastle was dry, for the chief officer was firing there. You heard him?"
"Yes, five or six times; and then he stopped suddenly."
"He had reason.—We got out. I could see her nose up in the air forty feet above us, covered with fore-cabin passengers. I warped the lady and the children upward—Heaven knows how; for the sea was breaking over us very sharp—till we were at the mainmast stump, and holding on by the wreck of it. I felt the ship stagger as if a whale had struck her, and heard a roar and a swish behind me, and looked back—just in time to see mizen, and poop, and all the poor women and children in it, go bodily, as if they had been shaved off with a knife. I suppose that altered her balance; for before I could turn again she dived forward, and then rolled over upon her beam ends to leeward, and I saw the sea walk in over her from stem to stern like one white wall, and I was washed from my hold, and it was all over."
"What became of the lady?"
"I saw a white thing flash by to leeward,—what's the use of asking?"
"But the child you held?"
"I didn't let it go till there was good reason."