Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/647

Rh from the child, that he couldn't see the child, and that he and the child must go together. He had even tried to wrest the child out of my arms, that he might keep her in his. "Mr. Rarx," said I to him when it came to that, "I have a loaded pistol in my pocket; and if you don't stand out of the gangway, and keep perfectly quiet, I shall shoot you through the heart, if you have got one." Says he, "You won't do murder, Captain Ravender I" "No, sir," says I, " I won't murder forty-four people to humor you, but I'll shoot you to save them." After that he was quiet, and stood shivering a little way off, until I named him to go over the side.

The long-boat being cast off, the surf-boat was soon filled. There only remained aboard the Golden Mary, John Mullion, the man who had kept on burning the blue lights (and who had lighted every new one at every old one before it went out, as quietly as if he had been at an illumination); John Steadiman; and myself. I hurried those two into the surf-boat, called to them to keep off, and waited with a grateful and relieved heart for the long-boat to come and take me in, if she could. I looked at my watch, and it showed me, by the blue-light, ten minutes past two. They lost no time. As soon as she was near enough, I swung myself into her, and called to the men, "With a will, lads! She's reeling! "We were not an inch too far out of the inner vortex of her going down, when, by the blue-light which John Mullion still burned in the bow of the surf-boat, we saw her lurch, and plunge to the bottom headforemost. The child cried weeping wildly, "Oh the dear poor Golden Mary! Oh look at her! Save her Save the poor Golden Mary!" And the light burned out, and the black domes seemed to come down upon us.

I suppose if we had all stood a-top of a mountain, and seen the whole remainder of the world sink away from under us we could hardly have felt more shocked and solitary than we did when we knew we were alone on the wide ocean, and that the beautiful ship in which most of us had been securely asleep within half an hour was gone forever. There was an awful silence in our boat, and such a kind of palsy on the rowers and the man at the rudder, that 1 felt they were scarcely keeping her before the sea. I spoke out then, and said, "Let every one