Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/652

222 a song. She had a soft, melodious voice, and, when she had finished it, our people up and begged for another. She sang them another, and after it had fallen dark ended with the evening hymn. From that time, whenever anything could be heard above the sea and wind, and while she had any voice left, nothing would serve the people hut that she should sing at sunset. She always did, and always ended with the evening hymn. We mostly took up the last line, and shed tears when it was done, but not miserably. We had a prayer night and morning, also, when the weather allowed of it.

Twelve nights and eleven days we had been driving in the boat, when old Mr. Rarx began to be delirious, and to cry out to me to throw the gold overboard or it would sink us, and we should all be lost. For days past the child had been declining, and that was the great cause of his wildness. He had been over and over again shrieking out to me to give her all the remaining meat, to give her all the remaining rum, to save her at any cost, or we should all be ruined. At this time, she lay in her mother's arms at my feet. One of her little hands was almost always creeping about her mother's neck or chin. I had watched the wasting of the little hand, and I knew it was nearly over.

The old man's cries were so discordant with the mother's love and submission, that I called out to him in an angry voice, unless he held his peace on the instant, I would order him to be knocked on the head and thrown overboard. He was mute then, until the child died, very peacefully, an hour afterward; which was known to all in the boat by the mother's breaking out into lamentations for the first time since the wreck—for she had great fortitude and constancy, though she was a little gentlewoman. Old Mr. Rarx then became quite ungovernable, tearing what rags he had on him, raging in imprecations, and calling to me that if I had thrown the gold overboard (always the gold with him!) I might have saved the child. "And now," says he, in a terrible voice, "we shall founder, and all go to the devil, for our sins will sink us when we have no innocent child to bear us up I" We so discovered with amazement that this old wretch had only cared for the life of the pretty little creature dear to all of us, because of the influence