it, it was worth being shipwrecked to have that woman in the boat; she
was awfully handsome, and as brave as she was lovely. She helped me
bail out the boat, and she worked like a man.

'So we kicked about the sea from midnight till seven the next evening,
and then we saw a steamer. "I'll--I'll give you anything I'm wearing
to hoist as a signal of distress," said the woman; but I had no need
to ask her, for the steamer picked us up and took us back to Bombay.
I forgot to tell you that, when the day broke, I couldn't recognise
the Captain's wife--widow, I mean. She had changed in the night as if
fire had gone over her. I met her a long time afterwards, and even
then she hadn't forgiven me for putting her into the boat and obeying
the Captain's orders. But the husband of the other woman--he's in the
Army--wrote me no end of a letter of thanks. I don't suppose he
considered that the way his wife behaved was enough to make any decent
man do all he could. The other fellows, who lay in the bottom of the
boat and groaned, I've never met. Don't want to. Shouldn't be civil
to 'em if I did. And that's how the _Visigoth_ went down, for no
assignable reason, with eighty bags of mail, five hundred souls, and
not a single packet insured, on just such a night as this.'

'Oh, Trinity of love and power,
Our brethren shield in that dread hour,
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them whereso'er they go.
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise by land and sea.'

'Strikes me they'll go on singing that hymn all night. Imperfect sort
of doctrine in the last lines, don't you think? They might have run