And he tore a ring from his finger, stripping flesh and skin with it, threw it down and fell dead!

But these things must not be dwelt upon.  The Boreas landed her dreadful cargo at the next large town and delivered it over to a multitude of eager hands and warm southern hearts—­a cargo amounting by this time to 39 wounded persons and 22 dead bodies.  And with these she delivered a list of 96 missing persons that had drowned or otherwise perished at the scene of the disaster.

A jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation and inquiry they returned the inevitable American verdict which has been so familiar to our ears all the days of our lives—­“Nobody to blame.”

**[The incidents of the explosion are not invented.  They happened just as they are told.—­The Authors.]

CHAPTER V.

Il veut faire secher de la neige au four et la vendre pour du sel blanc.

When the Boreas backed away from the land to continue her voyage up the river, the Hawkinses were richer by twenty-four hours of experience in the contemplation of human suffering and in learning through honest hard work how to relieve it.  And they were richer in another way also.  In the early turmoil an hour after the explosion, a little black-eyed girl of five years, frightened and crying bitterly, was struggling through the throng in the Boreas’ saloon calling her mother and father, but no one answered.  Something in the face of Mr. Hawkins attracted her and she came and looked up at him; was satisfied, and took refuge with him.  He petted her, listened to her troubles, and said he would find her friends for her.  Then he put her in a state-room with his children and told them to be kind to her (the adults of his party were all busy with the wounded) and straightway began his search.

It was fruitless.  But all day he and his wife made inquiries, and hoped against hope.  All that they could learn was that the child and her parents came on board at New Orleans, where they had just arrived in a vessel from Cuba; that they looked like people from the Atlantic States; that the family name was Van Brunt and the child’s name Laura.  This was all.  The parents had not been seen since the explosion.  The child’s manners were those of a little lady, and her clothes were daintier and finer than any Mrs. Hawkins had ever seen before.

As the hours dragged on the child lost heart, and cried so piteously for her mother that it seemed to the Hawkinses that the moanings and the wailings of the mutilated men and women in the saloon did not so strain at their heart-strings as the sufferings of this little desolate creature.  They tried hard to comfort her; and in trying, learned to love her; they could not help it, seeing how she clung, to them and put her arms about their necks and found-no solace but in their kind eyes and comforting words: