“No-o. But I was near it—mighty near it. They seen me go, an’ I heard the cry, ‘Man overboard!’ when I come up after my first plunge. I knowed they’d wear ship and send a boat after me. So, first off, I thought I’d hang to the balehook and be all right.
“But I got ’nough o’ that soon—yes’m! The waves was monster tall. One seized me and the bale o’ cotton, an’ we shot right up to the crest of it. Then I found myself fallin’ down on ’tother side, an’ that cotton bale tumblin’ after me. I had to get out o’ the way of that bale in a hurry, or it might have swiped me a blow that I’d never come up from. An’ I wasn’t much of a swimmer.”
The little girl’s eyes were round with interest and her lips were parted. She drank in every word the old sailor uttered.
“Well, there I was, little miss,” he said, still puffing on his pipe. “There was sev’ral of them cotton bales had been slid overboard about the same time, an’ I found myself a-dodgin’ of ’em. Fust one, then another, come after me—it seemed as if they was determined to git me.
“When I warn’t lookin’ for it, the end of one bale clumped me right in the back. I went down that time, I thought, for keeps.
“Down and down I went, till all I could see above me was green water streaked with white. I couldn’t git my breath; but otherwise, mind ye, I wasn’t in much trouble. I jest floated there, and I didn’t much care to come up. I didn’t care for anything.
“Lots o’ things I’d done, good an’ bad, chased through my head,” went on Benjamin. “I remembered folks I hadn’t thought of for years. My mother and father come to me—jest as plain! An’ them dead for a long time.”
“Oh! did you see ghosts?” Carolyn May exclaimed.
“Not to frighten me,” the sailor assured her. “It was jest as though I was sittin’ in a rockin’-chair, half asleep, an’ these dreams come to me. I warn’t in any pain. It was a lot worse when the boys reached me in the boat an’ hauled me inboard.
“Then,” said the old man with vigour, “it cost me something. Comin’ back from drowning is a whole lot worse than bein’ drowned. You take it from me.”