and your Arthur, I mind, was one of the four men to go aloft to clew it
up. Never a lad to shirk was Arthur. Well, a stouter craft of her
tonnage than the _Arbiter_ maybe never lived, nor no gear any sounder,
but there are things o' God's that the things o' man were never meant to
hold out against. Her jib flew to ribbons. 'Cut it clear!' I says, and
nigh half the crew jump for'ard. Half a dozen of the crew to once, but
Arthur,--your Arthur, your boy, Mrs. Snow, your son, John Snow--he was
quick enough to be among the half-dozen. Among a smart crew he was never
left behind. It looked safe for us all then, coming on to morning, but
who can ever tell? Fishermen's lives, they're expected to go fast, but
they're men's lives for all that, and 'Have a care!' I called to them,
myself to the wheel at the time, where, God knows, I was careful.

"Well, I saw this big fellow coming, a mountain of water with a
snow-white top to it against the first light of the morning. And I made
to meet it. A better vessel than the _Arbiter_ the hand o' man never
turned out--all Gloucester knows that--but, her best and my best, there
was no lifting her out of it. Like great pipe-organs aroaring this sea
came, and over we went. Over we went, and I heard myself saying: 'God in
heaven! You great old wagon, but are you gone at last?' And said it
again when maybe there was a fathom of water over my head--her quarter
was buried that deep and she that long coming up. Slow coming up she
was, though up she came at last. But a man was gone."

He had stopped; but he went on. "It was Arthur, John Snow, and you,
Mrs. Snow, who was gone. The boy you were expecting to see in this very
room by now, he was gone. Little Arthur that ten years ago, when first I
saw him, I could've swung to the ceiling of this room with my one
finger--little Arthur was gone. Well, 'Over with a dory!' I said. And,
gale and all, we over with a dory, with three of us in it. We looked and
looked in that terrible dawn, but no use--no man short o' the Son o' God
himself could a' stayed afloat, oilskins and red jacks, in that sea. But
we had to look, and coming aboard the dory was stove in--smashed, like
'twas a china teacup and not a new banker's double dory, against the
rail. And it was cold. Our frost-bitten fingers slipped from her
ice-wrapped rail, and the three of us nigh came to joining Arthur, and
Lord knows--a sin, maybe you'll say, to think it, John Snow--but I felt
then as if I'