m. The
first face I made out was the face of Miss Coleshaw, her eyes were wide
open and fixed on me. She seemed still to keep her senses, and, by the
alternate parting and closing of her lips, to be trying to speak, but I
could not hear that she uttered a single word. On her shoulder rested
the head of Mrs. Atherfield. The mother of our poor little Golden Lucy
must, I think, have been dreaming of the child she had lost; for there
was a faint smile just ruffling the white stillness of her face, when I
first saw it turned upward, with peaceful closed eyes towards the
heavens. From her, I looked down a little, and there, with his head on
her lap, and with one of her hands resting tenderly on his cheek--there
lay the Captain, to whose help and guidance, up to this miserable time,
we had never looked in vain,--there, worn out at last in our service, and
for our sakes, lay the best and bravest man of all our company. I stole
my hand in gently through his clothes and laid it on his heart, and felt
a little feeble warmth over it, though my cold dulled touch could not
detect even the faintest beating. The two men in the stern-sheets with
me, noticing what I was doing--knowing I loved him like a brother--and
seeing, I suppose, more distress in my face than I myself was conscious
of its showing, lost command over themselves altogether, and burst into a
piteous moaning, sobbing lamentation over him. One of the two drew aside
a jacket from his feet, and showed me that they were bare, except where a
wet, ragged strip of stocking still clung to one of them. When the ship
struck the Iceberg, he had run on deck leaving his shoes in his cabin.
All through the voyage in the boat his feet had been unprotected; and not
a soul had discovered it until he dropped! As long as he could keep his
eyes open, the very look of them had cheered the men, and comforted and
upheld the women. Not one living creature in the boat, with any sense
about him, but had felt the good influence of that brave man in one way
or another. Not one but had heard him, over and over again, give the
credit to others which was due only to himself; praising this man for
patience, and thanking that man for help, when the patience and the help
had really and truly, as to the best part of both, come only from him.
All this, and much more, I heard pouring confusedly from the men's lips
while they crouched down, sobbing and crying over their commander, and
wrapping the
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