I had
you round the waist all the way up, so no one could have took it off.
Why should they? And I undressed you myself; and nothing, save your
presence, was there to get off, but jersey and trousers, and a lump of
backy against your skin that looked the right sort."
"Have some, then," said Tom, pulling out the honey-dew. "As for the
belt, I suppose it's gone to choke the dog-fish."
And there the matter ended, outwardly at least; but only outwardly.
Tom had his own opinion, gathered from Grace's seemingly guilty
face, and to it he held, and called old Willis, in his heart, a
simple-minded old dotard, who had been taken in by her hypocrisy.
And Tom accompanied the Lieutenant on his dreary errand that day, and
several days after, through depositions before a justice, interviews
with Lloyd's underwriters, and all the sad details which follow a
wreck. Ere the week's end, forty bodies and more had been recovered,
and brought up, ten or twelve at a time, to the churchyard, and upon
the down, and laid side by side in one long shallow pit, where Frank
Headley read over them the blessed words of hope, amid the sobs of
women, and the grand silence of stalwart men, who knew not how soon
their turn might come; and after each procession came Grace Harvey,
with all her little scholars two and two, to listen to the funeral
service; and when the last corpse was buried, they planted flowers
upon the mound, and went their way again to learn hymns and read
their Bible--little ministering angels to whom, as to most sailors'
children, death was too common a sight to have in it aught of hideous
or strange.
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