I now began to remark certain changes in myself which I did not like.
They caused me much disquiet. I often saw the Golden Lucy in the air
above the boat. I often saw her I have spoken of before, sitting beside
me. I saw the Golden Mary go down, as she really had gone down, twenty
times in a day. And yet the sea was mostly, to my thinking, not sea
neither, but moving country and extraordinary mountainous regions, the
like of which have never been beheld. I felt it time to leave my last
words regarding John Steadiman, in case any lips should last out to
repeat them to any living ears. I said that John had told me (as he had
on deck) that he had sung out "Breakers ahead!" the instant they were
audible, and had tried to wear ship, but she struck before it could be
done. (His cry, I dare say, had made my dream.) I said that the
circumstances were altogether without warning, and out of any course that
could have been guarded against; that the same loss would have happened
if I had been in charge; and that John was not to blame, but from first
to last had done his duty nobly, like the man he was. I tried to write
it down in my pocket-book, but could make no words, though I knew what
the words were that I wanted to make. When it had come to that, her
hands--though she was dead so long--laid me down gently in the bottom of
the boat, and she and the Golden Lucy swung me to sleep.

* * * * *

_All that follows, was written by John Steadiman, Chief Mate_:

On the twenty-sixth day after the foundering of the Golden Mary at sea,
I, John Steadiman, was sitting in my place in the stern-sheets of the
Surf-boat, with just sense enough left in me to steer--that is to say,
with my eyes strained, wide-awake, over the bows of the boat, and my
brains fast asleep and dreaming--when I was roused upon a sudden by our