"Let 'em sleep; there ain't a lanyard loose."

"What time must it be?"

"Hard onto 'leven. My old woman's turned in long afore this, _she_
has; allus goes to bed on the stroke o' nine."

"She has thought of you to-night?"

"She has give me a prayer or so; she's the strictest kind. Now I'll
luff, there is a lull comin'; peskiest storms that have lulls in 'em.
You don't hear a swashing to a distance now?"

"No."

"Hark!"

A sound, not of wind nor sea, approached them--a rapid, rushing,
cutting sound.

"Up with the helm!" shrieked the skipper to himself. "God Almighty,
she is down on us!"

Osgood leaped up. The bowsprit of a large ship was over him; he threw
up his arms instinctively and caught at something; he felt his feet
drawing over the skipper's head, and that he thumped it with his
boots. He knew no more. The great ship crushed and plowed the _Bonita_
into the waves as easily as a plow buries in the sod the stubble
of the corn-field. Nothing signaled her destruction except the
exclamation of the skipper; nothing remained in the wide sea to show
it. Her timbers and the sleeping crew went to the bottom together.
Morning dawned on the wild scene, revealing no floating spar, no rib
of boat, no stave of tub or barrel, no sailor's hat, no remnant of
sail, no shred of clothing; the jaws of the sea had closed over all.
The ship, a Liverpool liner, driven out of her course by the storm,
cruised round the spot for a few hours, and then went on her way,
taking Osgood with her. He had clung to the folds of the forward sail;
and there he was found with his left wrist dislocated, his body
strained and sore, and his mind wandering. He was no romantic sight
with his red flannel shirt, fishy trowsers, cowhide boots, and hands
pickled in brine. Still the ship's surgeon took to him, and found,
when Osgood came to himself, that he had taken to a gentleman. He
lent him a suit of customary black, and introduced him to his
acquaintances. Osgood would have enjoyed the voyage across the
Atlantic but for the horror which had fallen on his mind from the
catastrophe of the _Bonita_.

"How old are you?" the surgeon asked him.

"About the first of March I was twenty-three; since then I have grown
so old I have lost the reckoning."

"I'll have to give you quinine, my boy."

"Give me some of the tincture of Lethe."

"It is of no use to one to forget; don't be soft."

"Let us reason together, Sawbones."

The Doctor agreed,