“Ought to be a law against it, sir,” growled the Lieutenant; “against women-folk and children going to sea.  It’s murder and cruelty.  I’ve been wrecked, scores of times; but it was with honest men, who could shift for themselves, and if they were drowned, drowned; but didn’t screech and catch hold—­I couldn’t stand that!  Well?”

“Well, there was a pretty little creature, an officer’s widow, and two children.  I caught her under one arm, and one of the children under the other;—­said ’I can’t take you all at once; I’ll come back for the rest, one by one.’—­Not that I believed it; but anything to stop the screaming; and I did hope to put some of them out of the reach of the sea, if I could get them forward.  I knew the forecastle was dry, for the chief officer was firing there.  You heard him?”

“Yes, five or six times; and then he stopped suddenly.”

“He had reason.—­We got out.  I could see her nose up in the air forty feet above us, covered with fore-cabin passengers.  I warped the lady and the children upward—­Heaven knows how; for the sea was breaking over us very sharp—­till we were at the mainmast stump, and holding on by the wreck of it.  I felt the ship stagger as if a whale had struck her, and heard a roar and a swish behind me, and looked back—­just in time to see mizen, and poop, and all the poor women and children in it, go bodily, as if they had been shaved off with a knife.  I suppose that altered her balance; for before I could turn again she dived forward, and then rolled over upon her beam ends to leeward, and I saw the sea walk in over her from stem to stern like one white wall, and I was washed from my hold, and it was all over.”

“What became of the lady?”

“I saw a white thing flash by to leeward,—­what’s the use of asking?”

“But the child you held?”

“I didn’t let it go till there was good reason.”

“Eh?”

Tom tapped the points of his fingers smartly against the side of his head, and then went on, in the same cynical drawl, which he had affected throughout—­

“I heard that—­against a piece of timber as we went overboard And, as a medical man, I considered after that, that I had done my duty.  Pretty little boy it was, just six years old:  and such a fancy for drawing.”

The Lieutenant was quite puzzled by Tom’s seeming nonchalance.

“What do you mean, sir?  Did you leave the child to perish?”

“Confound you, sir!  If you will have plain English, here it is.  I tell you I heard the child’s skull crack like an egg-shell!  There, let’s talk no more about it, or the whole matter.  It’s a bad business, and I’m not answerable for it, or you either; so let’s go and do what we are answerable for, and identify—­”

“Sir! you will be so good as to recollect,” said the Lieutenant, with ruffled plumes.

“I do; I do!  I beg your pardon a thousand times, I’m sure, for being so rude:  but you know as well as I, sir, there are a good many things in the world which won’t stand too much thinking over; and last night was one.”