Young fellow on board, nephew of Sir Theodore Thurstan,
of the Colonial Office, was in love with Miss Ellis--girl's name was
Ellis--father's a parson somewhere down in Somersetshire--and as soon as
the big sea took her up on its crest, what does Thurstan go and do, but
he ups on the taffrail, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, jumps
over to save her."
"But he didn't succeed?" the passenger asked, with languid interest.
"Succeed, my dear sir? and with a sea running twelve feet high like that?
Why, it was pitch dark, and such a surf on that the gig could hardly go
through it." The captain smiled, and puffed away pensively. "Drowned,"
he said, after a brief pause, with complacent composure. "Drowned.
Drowned. Drowned. Went to the bottom, both of 'em. Davy Jones's locker.
But unavoidable, quite. These accidents _will_ happen, even on the
best-regulated liners. Why, there was my brother Tom, in the Cunard
service--same that boast they never lost a passenger; there was my
brother Tom, he was out one day off the Newfoundland banks, heavy swell
setting in from the nor'-nor'-east, icebergs ahead, passengers battened
down--Bless my soul, how that light seems to come and go, don't it?"
It was a reflected light, flashing from the island straight in the
captain's eyes, small and insignificant as to size, but strong for all
that in the full tropical sunshine, and glittering like a diamond from a
vague elevation near the centre of the island.
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