Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/231

216 sunk at once. Two others, cook and carpenter, were able to save themselves by and might, alas! have saved her, had she boon minded to make the attempt.

What strain of the heroic in her mind overcame the natural instinct to do and pare all upon the chance of saving her own life, and those so dear to her, we shall never know. No doubt the separation involved in any such attempt appeared to her an abandonment of her husband and child. Resting in this idea, she could more easily nerve herself to perish with them than to part from them. She and the babe were feeble creatures to be thrown upon the mercy of the waves, even with the promised aid. Her husband, young and strong, was faithful unto death, and would not leave her. Both of them, with fervent belief, regarded death as the entrance to another life, and surely, upon its very threshold, sought to do their best. So we must end our questioning and mourning concerning them with a silent acquiescence in what was to be.

A friend of Margaret, who visited the scene on the day after the catastrophe, was persuaded that seven resolute men could have saved every soul on board the vessel. Through the absence of proper system and discipline, the life-boat, though applied for early on the morning of the wreck, did not arrive until one o'clock in the afternoon, when the sea had become so swollen by the storm that it was impossible to launch it. Owe hopes, but scarcely believes, that this state of things has been amended before this time.

The bodies of Margaret and her husband were never found. That of Angelo was buried at Fire Island, with much mourning on the part of the surviving sailors,