“We who survived,” continued Thacher, “speedily made our way from the crumbling wreck to the rock between whose horns our bows were jammed; and hardly were we all off when the last timber splintered beneath the hammer of the surge, and we were left, thirteen poor shivering wretches, two of them little babes in their mothers’ arms, clinging desperately to that naked rock, the helpless prey of white-headed waves that like wild beasts ran raging along the sides of our poor hold, and now and again with a victorious howl leaped up and seized first one and then another of those poor little ones whom neither a father’s arms nor a mother’s piteous embrace sufficed to save. One by one they went, those darlings of our lives, and as her infant was torn from her arms, Mary Avery, with a cry I shall never forget, grasped after it, and was carried away with it. Then my friend, who had followed them but that I held him back, struggled to his knees and prayed aloud. O my friends! when I remember those words, when I remember that face, drenched with the storm, blanched by the blow that brake his heart, yet luminous as was Stephen’s in his martyrdom, I feel like Paul who, being caught up to heaven, saw and heard what it is not lawful—nay, what it is not possible—for a man to repeat.”
“Nay, we would not have you try, my son,” whispered the Elder, while the captain folded his arms and grimly set his lips, and John Alden wept without disguise.
“The next thing I recall,” pursued Thacher softly, “is holding my cousin’s hand and saying over and over, ‘You shall not leave me, John, you shall not leave me! We will die together or we will live together!’ and I see once more amid the whirl and torment of the storm the smile wherewith he looked me in the face and said,—
“‘We will die together, Anthony, and please God we will live together!’ And then, while some loving cry to God rose afresh from his lips, came a giant wave and tore us asunder, and I knew no more until I was struggling in the waves with mine arm around my poor wife, and she clinging senseless to me.
“Then all His waves and storms went over me, and I yielded up my spirit to Him who gave it; but it was not yet purified enough to go where my friend was gone before, and God in mercy granted me yet another season of probation. When the Lord’s Day broke, it found me with my poor wife stretched like two corpses upon the strand of a little islet hard by the rock I have named Avery’s Fall, and beside us a poor goat, who all unaided or uncared for had come safe to land. My poor wife! when she recovered her senses and looked about her and knew our piteous case, who can blame her that she cried,—
“‘A wretched goat saved, and my four sweet babies drowned! Doth God then care for oxen?’”
“The Father of us all can forgive the misery of a mother’s heart,” said the Elder, but Jonathan Alden gravely turned away his head and looked out toward the sea.
“Not only the milch goat, but a cheese and a rundlet of beer were washed ashore,” pursued Thacher, “and oh, piteous sight! the cradle whence my wife had snatched her babe came floating safe ashore, with the covering wrought by my sister in England for our first darling, safe in the bottom. Like Noah’s ark with the dove flown to return no more, it seemed to us, and as I dragged the cradle ashore and my poor wife sank beside it and buried her head in that pretty covering, her mad despair gave way in gracious tears, and she wept until she was able to pray.
“Thus, then, our Lord’s Day passed, but with the Monday came rescue, and we two with our empty cradle and its fair-wrought spread, and the poor goat whose life had hung in the balance, were all brought first to Boston, and then to Yarmouth.”