still, who knew but they might be wanted?
And they hung on with the same feeling which tempts one to linger
round a grave ere the earth is filled in, loth to give up the last
sight, and with it the last hope. The ship herself, over and above her
lost crew, was in their eyes a person to be loved and regretted. And
Gentleman Jan spoke, like a true sailor--

"Ah, poor dear! And she such a beauty, Mr. Brown; as any one might see
by her lines, even that way off. Ah, poor dear!"

"And so many brave souls on board; and, perhaps, some of them not
ready, Mr. Beer," says the serious elderly chief boatman. "Eh, Captain
Willis?"

"The Lord has had mercy on them, I don't doubt." answers the old man,
in his quiet sweet voice. "One can't but hope that he would give them
time for one prayer before all was over; and having been drowned
myself, Mr. Brown, three times, and taken up for dead--that is,
once in Gibraltar Bay, and once when I was a total wreck in the old
Seahorse, that was in the hurricane in the Indies; after that when
I fell over quay-head here, fishing for bass,--why, I know well how
quick the prayer will run through a man's heart, when he's a-drowning,
and the light of conscience, too, all one's life in one minute,
like--"

"It arn't the men I care for," says Gentleman Jan; "they're gone to
heaven, like all brave sailors do as dies by wreck and battle: but the
poor dear ship, d'ye see, Captain Willis, she ha'n't no heaven to go
to, and that's why I feel for her so."

Both the old men shake their heads at Jan's doctrine, and turn the
subject off.

"You'd better go home, Captain, 'fear of the rheumatics. It's a rough
night for your years; and you've no call, like me."

"I would, but my maid there; and I can't get her home; and I can't
leave her." And Willis points to the schoolmistress, who sits upon
the flat slope of rock, a little apart from the rest, with her face
resting on her hands, gazing intently out into the wild waste.

"Make her go; it's her duty--we all have our duties. Why does her
mother let her out at this time of night? I keep my maids tighter than
that, I warrant." And disciplinarian Mr. Brown makes a step towards
her.

"Ah, Mr. Brown, don't now! She's not one of us. There's no saying
what's going on there in her. Maybe she's praying; maybe she sees more
than we do, over the sea there."

"What do you mean? There's no living body in those breakers, be sure!"

"There's more living things about