“This is the little girl’s uncle, Benjamin,” Miss Amanda said quietly. “He will be interested in what you have already told me about the loss of the Dunraven. Will you please repeat it all?”
“The Dunraven?” gasped Mr. Stagg, sitting down without being asked. “Hannah——”
“There is no hope, of course,” Amanda Parlow spoke up quickly, “that your sister, Mr. Stagg, and her husband were not lost. But having found out that Benjamin was on that steamer with them, I thought you should know. I have warned him to be careful how he speaks before Carolyn May. You may wish to hear the story at first hand.”
“Thank you,” choked Joseph Stagg. He wanted to say more, but could not.
Benjamin Hardy’s watery eyes blinked, and he blew his nose.
“Aye, aye, mate!” he rumbled, “hard lines—for a fact. I give my tes-ti-mony ’fore the consul when we was landed—so did all that was left of us from the Dunraven. Me bein’ an unlettered man, they didn’t run me very clos’t. I can’t add much more to it.
“As I say, that purser’s boat your sister and her sickly husband was in had jest as good a chance as we had. We nigh bumped into each other soon after the Dunraven sunk. So, then, we pulled off aways from each other. Then the fog rolled up from the African shore—a heap o’ fog, mate. It sponged out the lamp in the purser’s boat. We never seen no more of ’em—nor heard no more.”
He went on with other particulars, but all, so Mr. Stagg thought, futile and pointless. He knew the steamship, Dunraven, had sunk; and what mattered it whether Hannah and her husband had gone down with her or gone down with the purser’s boat a few hours later? In his agony of spirit, he said something like this—and rather brusquely—to the old seaman.
“Aye, aye,” admitted Benjamin Hardy. “’Twould seem so to a landsman. But there is many a wonder of the sea that landsmen don’t know about, sir.”
“Tell Mr. Stagg about the fog and the current, Benjamin,” urged Miss Amanda.