“I pray I may never be put to it again like that, with all a man’s selfish desire for life fighting against him. For a moment I shut my eyes, and they began to lower; but I was obliged to open them again, and as I did so, I saw a wild scared face, with long wet hair clinging round it, and a pair of little white hands were stretched out to me as if for help.
“‘Hold hard!’ I shouts.
“‘No, no,’ roared out two or three, ‘there isn’t a moment;’ and as the boat was being lowered from the davits, I made a jump, caught the bulwarks with my hands, and climbed back on board, just as the boat kissed the water, was unhooked, and floated away.
“Then as I crept, hand-over-hand, to the girl’s side, whipped out my knife, and was cutting her loose, while her weak arms clung to me, I felt a horrible feeling of despair come over me, for the boat was leaving us; and I knew what a coward I was at heart, as I had to fight with myself so as not to leave the girl to her fate, and leap overboard to swim for my life. I got the better of it, though—went down on my knees, so as not to see the boat, and got the poor trembling, clinging creature loose.
“‘Now, my lass,’ I says, ‘quick’—and I raised her up—‘hold on by the side while I make fast a rope round you.’
“And then I stood up to hail the boat—the boat as warn’t there, for in those brief moments she must have capsized, and we were alone on the sinking steamer, which now lay in the trough of the sea.
“As soon as I got over the horror of the feeling, a sort of stony despair came over me; but when I saw that little pale appealing face at my side, looking to me for help, that brought the manhood back, and in saying encouraging things to her, I did myself good.
“My first idea was to make something that would float us, but I gave that up directly, for I could feel that I was helpless; and getting the poor girl more into shelter, I took a bit of tobacco in a sort of stolid way, and sat down with a cork life-buoy over my arm, one which I had cut loose from where it had hung forgotten behind the wheel.
“But I never used it, for the storm went down fast, and the steamer floated still, waterlogged, for three days, when we were picked up by a passing vessel, half-starved, but hoping. And during that time my companion had told me that she was the attendant of one of the lady passengers on board; and at last, when we parted at the Cape, she kissed my hand, and called me her hero, who had saved her life—poor grimey me, you know!
“We warn’t long, though, before we met again, for somehow we’d settled that we’d write; and a twelvemonth after, Mary was back in England, and my wife. That’s why I said I took her like out of the hands of death, though in a selfish sort of way, being far, you know, from perfect. But what I say, speaking as Edward Brown, stoker, is this: Make a good fight of it, no matter how black things may look, and leave the rest to Him.”