Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/140

 There was something woefully uninteresting about it. He had sometimes imagined his name with "killed in action" after it, but here was no implication of heroism. Perhaps he might say that he had "died in performance of his duty." He didn't know. Anyway, what did it matter, for there wouldn't be anyone to tell! Unless, he reflected the next moment, he could tell his mother. Nelson believed implicitly in Heaven, but whether he would get there was another question, he thought. And even if he did, what would it be like, and—Oh, it was a terrible jumble! All a fellow could do was wait and see. And meanwhile there was a task at hand, which was to get his head out of water occasionally and make a fight for it. That was it! He'd go down fighting, as became an American Navy man! There was comfort in that thought. It heartened him, and he struck out more vigorously and shook the brine from his eyes with new determination. He had found a reason for keeping up the struggle.

How long he had been in the water he neither knew nor considered, but it is likely that no more than a quarter of an hour at most had passed since he had been hurtled past the broken rail of the Gyandotte. Sliding over and over, fighting for breath, down the slope of a sea, his out- 115