"Don't leave us, sir,"
they said, "don't leave us." "I leave you," says I, "under the command
and the guidance of Mr. William Rames, as good a sailor as I am, and as
trusty and kind a man as ever stepped. Do your duty by him, as you have
done it by me; and remember to the last, that while there is life there
is hope. God bless and help you all!" With those words I collected what
strength I had left, and caught at two arms that were held out to me, and
so got from the stern-sheets of one boat into the stern-sheets of the
other.
"Mind where you step, sir," whispered one of the men who had helped me
into the Long-boat. I looked down as he spoke. Three figures were
huddled up below me, with the moonshine falling on them in ragged streaks
through the gaps between the men standing or sitting above them. The
first face I made out was the face of Miss Coleshaw, her eyes were wide
open and fixed on me. She seemed still to keep her senses, and, by the
alternate parting and closing of her lips, to be trying to speak, but I
could not hear that she uttered a single word.
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