"Presently Bill says, 'Good-by, father. God bless you!' and then he let go his hold and went down. Five minutes afterwards, maybe, though it seemed a week to me, Jack did the same.
"There we was—the girl and I—alone.
"I think now, sir, looking back upon it, as I was mad then. I felt somehow as that the gal had drowned my two boys; and the devil kept whispering to me to beat her white face in, and then to go with her to the bottom. I should ha' done it too, but my promise kept me back. I had sworn she should get safe to shore if I could, and it seemed to me that included the promise that I would do my best for us both to get there. I was getting weak now, and sometimes I seemed to wander, and my thoughts got mixed up, and I talked to the boys as if they could hear me. Once or twice my hold had slipped, and I had hard work enough to get hold again. I was sensible enough to know as it couldn't last much longer, and, talking as in my sleep, I had told the boys I would be with 'em in a minute or two, when a sound of shouting quite close roused me up sudden.
"Then I saw we had drifted close to the brig. Some men had climbed along, taking hold hand-in-hand when they passed across places where the sea was already breaking over, and bringing with them the rope which, as I afterwards heard, the man on horseback had brought back from Filey. It was a brave deed on their part, sir, for the tide was rising fast. When they saw I lifted my head and could hear them they shouted that they would throw me the rope, and that I must leave go of the boat, which would have smashed us to pieces, as I knew, if she had struck the rocks with us. Where they were standing the rock was full six feet above the sea; but a little farther it shelved down, and each wave ran three feet deep across the brig. They asked me could I swim; and when I shook my head, for I was too far gone to speak now, one of 'em jumped in with the end of the rope. He twisted it round the two of us, and shouted to his friends to pull. It was time, for we weren't much above a boat's length from the brig. Three of the chaps as had the rope run down to the low part of the rock and pulled together, while another two kept hold of the end of the rope and kept on the rock, so as to prevent us all being washed across the brig together. I don't remember much more about it. I let go the boat, sank down at once, as if the girl and I had been lead, felt a tug of the rope, and then, just as the water seemed choking me, a great smash, and I remember nothing else. When I came to my right senses again I was in a bed at Filey. I had had a bad knock on the head, and my right arm, which had been round the girl, was just splintered. They took it off that night. The first thing as they told me when I came round was that the gal was safe. I don't know whether I was glad or sorry to hear it. I was glad, because I had kept my promise and brought her back alive. I was sorry, because I hated her like pison. Why should she have been saved when my two boys was drowned? She was well-plucked, was that gal, for she had never quite lost her senses; and the moment she had got warm in bed with hot blankets, and suchlike she wanted to get dry clothes and to go straight on to Scarborough in a carriage. However, the doctor would not hear of it, and she wrote a little letter saying as she was all right; and a man galloped off with it on horseback, and got there just as they had got a carriage to the door to drive over to Filey to ask if there was any news there about the boat. They came over and slept there, and she went back with them next day. I heard all this afterwards, for I was off my head, what with the blow I had got and one thing and another, before I had been there an hour. And I raved and cussed at the girl, they tell me, so that they wouldn't let her father in to see me.
"It was nigh a fortnight before I came to myself, to find my arm gone, and then I was another month before I was out of bed. They came over to Filey when I was sensible, and I hear they had got the best doctor over from Scarborough to see me, and paid everything for me till I was well, but I wouldn't see them when they came. I was quite as bitter against her as I had been when I was in the sea drowning; and I was so fierce when they talked of coming in that the doctor told them it would make me bad again if they came. So they went up to London, and when I could get about they sent me a letter, the gal herself and her father and mother, thanking me, I suppose; but I don't know, for I just tore 'em into pieces without reading them. Then a lawyer of the town here came to me and said he'd 'struction to buy me a new boat, and to buy a 'nuity for me. I told him his 'nuity couldn't bring my boys back again, and that I warn't going to take blood-money; and as to the boat, I'd knock a hole in her and sink her if she came. A year after that lawyer came to me again, and said he'd more 'structions; and I told him though I'd only one arm left I was man enough still to knock his head off his shoulders, and that I'd do it if he came to me with his 'structions or anything else.
"By this time I'd settled down to work on the shore, and had got the name of Surly Joe. Rightly enough, too. I had one of them planks with wheels that people use to get in and out of the boats; and as the boatmen on the shore was all good to me, being sorry for my loss, and so telling my story to people as went out with them, I got enough to live on comfortable, only there was nothing comfortable about me. I wouldn't speak a word, good or bad, to a soul for days together, unless it was to swear at anyone as tried to talk to me. I hated everyone, and myself wuss nor all. I was always cussing the rocks that didn't kill me, and wondering how many years I'd got to go on at this work before my turn came. Fortunately I'd never cared for drink; but sometimes I'd find my thoughts too hard for me, and I'd go and drink glass after glass till I tumbled under the table.
"At first my old mates tried to get me round, and made offers to me to take a share in their boats, or to make one in a fishing voyage; but I would not hear them, and in time they dropped off one by one, and left me to myself, and for six years there wasn't a surlier, wuss-conditioned, lonelier chap, not in all England, than I was. Well, sir, one day—it was just at the beginning of the season, but was too rough a day for sailing—I was a-sitting down on the steps of a machine doing nothing, just wondering and wondering why things was as they was, when two little gals cum up. One was, maybe, five, and the other a year younger. I didn't notice as they'd just cum away from the side of a lady and gentleman. I never did notice nothing that didn't just concern me; but I did see that they had a nurse not far off. The biggest girl had great big eyes, dark and soft, and she looked up into my face, and held out a broken wooden spade and a bit of string, and says she, 'Sailor-man, please mend our spade.' I was struck all of a heap like; for though I had been mighty fond of little children in the old days, and was still always careful of lifting them into boats, my name and my black looks had been enough, and none of them had spoken to me for years. I felt quite strange like when that child spoke out to me, a'most like what I've read Robinson Crusoe, he as was wrecked on the island, felt when he saw the mark of a foot.
"I goes to hold out my hand, and then I draws it back, and says, gruff, 'Don't you see I aint got but one hand? Go to your nurse.'
"I expected to see her run right off; but she didn't, but stood as quiet as may be, with her eyes looking up into my face.
"'Nurse can't mend spade; break again when Nina digs. Nina will hold spade together, sailor-man tie it up strong.'