Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/296

278 lawyer, who has spent his life in attempting to do this in his successive cases, tells me that he has never yet thoroughly accomplished it. It is hard enough to be perfectly sure of the facts in case of a runaway accident which takes place in broad daylight opposite our own windows. It is difficult to this day to get a thoroughly correct account of the most insignificant skirmish during our civil war; and of a wreck that happens at daybreak in a howling storm, on a lee shore, the longest cross-examination of the survivors hardly avails. In this particular case there are now no witnesses to reëxamine; we only know that the acting captain left his ship long before his passengers, while four seamen remained. Either they remained because they thought they would have personally a better chance by so doing, in which case their judgment may have been as good as his; or they remained because of a devotion to their passengers which the captain did not share. While they were still on the wreck the case naturally did not seem hopeless to the passengers. There was the shore in sight; with the life-boat which they might suppose that the captain would get launched if nobody else had; with its life-saving mortar for throwing a rope, which he at least might employ. There was the chance of a lull in the storm, during which a raft might be built, on which they might go together. It was not so clear that the only mode of escape was to trust themselves singly on a little plank like that from which Mrs. Hasty,