fast, and so one of the men followed me, and we went to the boat, set
the altar stones carefully ashore, then fetched the spare anchor, and
moored her with that in a place where the water seemed deep to the bank.

It was a bad place. For when the tide fell, which it did very fast, we
found that we had put her on a ledge. Presently therefore, and while we
were trying to bail out the water that was in her, the ship took the
ground aft, and we could not move her before the worst happened. Swiftly
the tide left her, and her long keel bent and twisted, and her planks
gaped with the strain of her own weight, all the greater for the water
yet in her that flowed to the hanging bows. The good ship might sail no
more. Her back was broken.

That was the only time that I have ever seen my father weep. But as the
stout timbers cracked and groaned under the strain it seemed to him as
if the ship that he loved was calling piteously to him for help that he
could not give, and it was too much for him. The gale that was yet
raging overhead and the sea that was still terrible in the wide waters
of the river had been things that had not moved him, for that the ship
should break up in a last struggle with them was, as it were, a fitting
end for her. But that by his fault here in the hardly-won haven she
should meet her end was not to be borne, and he turned away from us and
wept.

Then came my mother and set her hand on his shoulder and spoke softly to
him with wise words.

"Husband, but a little while ago it would have been wonderful if there
were one of us left alive, or one plank of the ship on another. And now
we are all safe and unhurt, and the loss of the ship is the least of