“The current was a-settin’ south.  Sech a tide hadn’t been knowd sence the oldest men could remember:  the sea broke over all the mashes clear up to the farm-houses.  Well, sir, I was but a lad, but I couldn’t sleep:  seemed as ef I ought to be a doin’ something, I didn’t rightly know what.  About three o’clock in the morning I heerd a gun, and in a minute another, ‘Mother,’ I says, ‘there’s a vessel on the bar.’  So, as I gets on my clothes, she makes me a mug of hot coffee.  ’You must drink this, Jacob, an’ eat some’at,’ she says, ‘before you go out.’  So to quiet her I takes the mug, but I hadn’t half drunk it when I hears shouting outside.  It was one of the Shattucks:  he says, ’There’s a ship come ashore up by Barnegat’ I says, ‘No,’ I says:  ’the guns are from off the inlet.’  So I runs one way, and Shattuck the other.  The night was dark as pitch, and the storm drivin’ like hell.  And we was both right, for there was two vessels—­a coast-schooner down by Squan, where I goes, and this big ship, the John Minturn, just here,” pointing with his thumb over his shoulder to the beach outside and bar beyond.

“Were there many lives lost?”

“Over three hundred—­all but fourteen.  They come ashore tied on to boards or hencoops or the like—­seven of the crew and seven passengers.  We tried to launch the surfboat, but the boat was never built that could live on that sea.  She was bound from New Orleans to New York, and the most of her passengers were wealthy people, going to the North for the winter.  At least, so we jedged from her papers and the bodies and clothes of them that come ashore—­some pretty little children, I mind, babies and their black nurses, and their mothers—­delicate women with valooable rings on their hands.  Some of them’s buried in the graveyard in the village, and their friends took some away.”

“There was the Minerva, too,” said the captain as Jacob paused to light his cigar again.  “I forgit how many emigrants went down on that ship, but I remember picking up on the beach next day a clay pipe, with a stem nigh a yard long, not even chipped.  It seemed curious that a useless thing like that should be washed safe ashore and hundreds of human lives be lost.  And there was the New Era—­went down near Deal:  three hundred emigrants drowned.  The captain had nailed down the hatches on them.  Oh, that’s generally done,” he added, seeing the look of horror on our faces:  “in a storm the steerage can’t be managed otherwise.”

“I remember,” said one of the listeners, “an incident which occurred when I was in China about ten years ago.  Five hundred Chinese soldiers were being taken across the Inland Sea to quell an insurrection:  when off Hoang-Ho the ship sprung a leak.  The boats could only give a chance of escape to about eighty.  The troops were all ordered on deck, while a detachment was selected to fill the boats.  The rest remained immovable, standing under arms without a word, until the ship went down.”