ible storm: but one surfboat got out to
her. They took off what they could--the women and part of the crew. I
was a boy then, and I mind seein' them come ashore, their beards and
clothes frozen stiff. After the boat left, some of the crew jumped
into the sea, but they couldn't live in it two minutes. It was nigh
dawn when the boat got out to the brig agen, and there wasn't a livin'
soul aboard of her; only the body of the mate lashed tight to the
mainmast, a solid mass of ice. He couldn't be got down, and I've heerd
my father say it was awful to see him, with one hand held out as if
p'intin' to shore, rockin' to and fro there overhead till the brig
went under. Months after, some of the bodies of the crew was thrown up
by the tide; they was as fresh as if they'd jest gone to sleep."

"How could that be? Where had they been?"

"Sucked into the sand. Them heavy nothe-easters always throws up a
bar, an' they was sucked under it. When the bar give way the tide
threw them up. But as soon as the air tetched them they began to
moulder."

There was a short silence. The evening was gathering fast, cold and
threatening, the little fire threw our shadows high up on the wall,
and the wail of the wind and thunder of the incoming tide gave a
ghastly significance to this matter-of-fact catalogue of horrors. As
we looked through the little window at the vast gray plain of water,
it seemed as if every wave covered a wreck or dead men's bones.

"Now, George Johnson," continued Jacob, "he was the first man as saw
the John Minturn come ashore. That was the worst storm I ever seen on
this coast.--You mind it, cap'n?"

The captain nodded gravely: "February 15, 1846. It was the night old
Phoebe Hall died, and I was sitting with the body when I heerd the
guns fired from the Minturn," he remarked.--"But go on, Jacob," waving
his pipe.

"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 w