tell how that,
while I was engaged in lightening the ship, I was touched by the
self-sacrificing spirit of a beautiful young woman, who, to save the
life of her lover, pushed her aged mother forward to where I was
operating, imploring me to take the old lady, but spare, O, spare her
dear Henry. I might go on to set forth how that I not only did take the
old lady, as requested, but immediately seized dear Henry, and sent him
flying as far as I could to leeward, having first broken his back across
the rail and pulled a double-fistful of his curly hair out. I might
proceed to state that, feeling appeased, I then stole the long boat and
taking the beautiful maiden pulled away from the ill-fated ship to the
church of St. Massaker, Fiji, where we were united by a knot which I
afterward untied with my teeth by eating her. But, in truth, nothing of
all this occurred, and I can not afford to be the first writer to tell a
lie just to interest the reader. What really did occur is this: as I
stood on the quarter-deck, heaving over the passengers, one after
another, Captain Abersouth, having finished his novel, walked aft and
quietly hove _me_ over.

The sensations of a drowning man have been so often related that I shall
only briefly explain that memory at once displayed her treasures: all
the scenes of my eventful life crowded, though without confusion or
fighting, into my mind. I saw my whole career spread out before me, like
a map of Central Africa since the discovery of the gorilla. There were
the cradle in which I had lain, as a child, stupefied with soothing
syrups; the perambulator, seated in which and propelled from behind, I
overthrew the schoolmaster, and in which my infantile spine received its
curvature; the nursery-maid, surrendering her lips alternately to me and
the gardener; the old home of my youth, with the ivy and the mortgage on
it; my eldest brother, who by will succeeded to the family debts; my
sister, who ran away with the Count von Pretzel, coachman to a most
respectable New York family; my mother, standing in the attitude of a
saint, pressing with both hands her prayer-book against the patent
palpitators from Madame Fahertini's; my venerable father, sitting in his
chimney corner, his silvered head bowed upon his breast, his withered
hands crossed patiently in his lap, waiting with Christian resignation
for death, and drunk as a lord--all this, and much more, came before my
mind's eye, and there was no charg