e. (His cry, I dare say, had made my dream.) I said that the
circumstances were altogether without warning, and out of any course that
could have been guarded against; that the same loss would have happened
if I had been in charge; and that John was not to blame, but from first
to last had done his duty nobly, like the man he was. I tried to write
it down in my pocket-book, but could make no words, though I knew what
the words were that I wanted to make. When it had come to that, her
hands--though she was dead so long--laid me down gently in the bottom of
the boat, and she and the Golden Lucy swung me to sleep.

* * * * *

_All that follows, was written by John Steadiman, Chief Mate_:

On the twenty-sixth day after the foundering of the Golden Mary at sea,
I, John Steadiman, was sitting in my place in the stern-sheets of the
Surf-boat, with just sense enough left in me to steer--that is to say,
with my eyes strained, wide-awake, over the bows of the boat, and my
brains fast asleep and dreaming--when I was roused upon a sudden by our
second mate, Mr. William Rames.

"Let me take a spell in your place," says he. "And look you out for the
Long-boat astern. The last time she rose on the crest of a wave, I
thought I made out a signal flying aboard her."

We shifted our places, clumsily and slowly enough, for we were both of us
weak and dazed with wet, cold, and hunger. I waited some time, watching
the heavy rollers astern, before the Long-boat rose a-top of one of them
at the same time with us. At last, she was heaved up for a moment well
in view, and there, sure enough, was the signal flying aboard of her--a
strip of rag of some sort, rigged to an oar, and hoisted in her bows.

"What does it mean?" says Rames to me in a quavering, trembling sort of
voice. "Do they signal a sail in sight?"

"Hush, for God's sake!" says I, clapping my hand over his mouth. "Don't
let the people hear you. They'll all go mad together if we mislead them
about that signal. Wait a bit, till I have another look at it."

I held on by him, for he had set me all of a tremble with his notion of a
sail in sight, and watched for the Long-boat again. Up she rose on the
top of another roller. I made out the signal clearly, that second time,
and saw that it was rigged half-mast high.

"Rames," says I, "it's a signal of distress. Pass the word forward to
keep her before the sea, and no more. We must get the Long-boat within
hailing di