e _Bataviaman_ went on the beach, I stood as
near her as our rescuers had stood to us last night, and there were some
aboard who took the fatal leap from off her bows and tried to battle
through the surf. I was so near them I could mark their features and read
the wild hope in their faces at the first, and then the under-tow took
hold of them, and never one that saved his life that day. And yet all
came to beach at last, and I knew them by their dead faces for the men I
had seen hoping against hope 'twixt ship and shore; some naked and some
clothed, some bruised and sorely beaten by the pebbles and the sea, and
some sound and untouched--all came to beach at last.

So I sat and waited for him to come; and none of the beach-walkers said
anything to me, the Moonfleet men thinking I came from Ringstave, and the
Langton men that I belonged to Moonfleet; and both that I had marked some
cask at sea for my own and was waiting till it should come in. Only after
a while Master Ratsey joined me, and sitting down by me, begged me to eat
bread and meat that he had brought. Now I had little heart to eat, but
took what he gave me to save myself from his importunities, and having
once tasted was led by nature to eat all, and was much benefited thereby.
Yet I could not talk with Ratsey, nor answer any of his questions, though
another time I should have put a thousand to him myself; and he seeing
'twas no good sat by me in silence, using a spy-glass now and again to
make out the things floating at sea. As the day grew the men left the
fire at the back of the beach, and came down to the sea-front where the
waves were continually casting up fresh spoil. And there all worked with
a will, not each one for his own hand, but all to make a common hoard
which should be divided afterwards.

Among the flotsam moving outside the breakers I could see more than one
dark ball, like black buoys, bobbing up and down, and lifting as the
wave came by: and knew them for the heads of drowned men. Yet though I
took Ratsey's glass and scanned all carefully enough, I could make
nothing of them, but saw the pinnace floating bottom up, and farther out
another boat deserted and down to her gunwale in the water. 'Twas midday
before the first body was cast up, when the sky was breaking a little,
and a thin and watery sun trying to get through, and afterwards three
other bodies followed. They were part of the pinnace's crew, for all had
the iron ring on the left wri