hen 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."

Somebody reminded him of the story of the Birkenhead, which sank
within four miles of the English coast with a regiment abo