“I do, I do,” returned the governess, shuddering. “I have heard them, and never will my memory lose the recollection of the sounds.”
“Ay, I thought you might know something of the same, and solemn groans they are: But, as the hulk kept rolling on the top of the sea, and no further signs of her going down, I began to think it best to cut into her abaft, in order to make sure that some miserable wretch had not been caught in his hammock at the time she went over. Well, good will, and an axe, soon let us into the secret of the moans.”
“You found a child?”
“And its mother, my Lady. As good luck would have it, they were in a birth on the weather-side and as yet the water had not reached them. But pent air and hunger had nearly proved as bad as the brine. The lady was in the agony when we got her out; and as to the boy, proud and strong as you now see him there on yonder gun, my Lady, he was just so miserable, that it was no small matter to make him swallow the drop of wine and water that the Lord had left us, in order, as I have often thought since, to bring him up to be, as he at this moment is, the pride of the ocean!”
“But, the mother?”
“The mother had given the only morsel of biscuit she had to the child, and was dying, in order that the urchin might live. I never could get rightly into the meaning of the thing, my Lady, why a woman, who is no better than a Lascar in matters of strength, nor any better than a booby in respect of courage, should be able to let go her hold of life in this quiet fashion, when many a stout mariner would be fighting for each mouthful of air the Lord might see fit to give. But there she was, white as the sail on which the storm has long beaten, and limber as a pennant in a calm, with her poor skinny arm around the lad, holding in her hand the very mouthful that might have kept her own soul in the body a little longer.”
“What did she, when you brought her to the light?”
“What did she!” repeated Fid, whose voice was getting thick and husky, “why, she did a d——d honest thing; she gave the boy the crumb, and motioned as well as a dying woman could, that we should have an eye over him, till the cruise of life was up.”
“And was that all?”
“I have always thought she prayed; for something passed between her and one who was not to be seen, if a man might judge by the fashion in which her eyes were turned aloft, and her lips moved. I hope, among others, she put in a good word for one Richard Fid; for certain she had as little need to be asking for herself as any body. But no man will ever know what she said, seeing that her mouth was shut from that time for ever after.”