bo'sn for'd there to break up that prayer-meeting. The _Mudlark_ isn't a
seamen's chapel, I suppose."

"But," I replied, impatiently, "can't something be done to lighten the
ship?"

"Well," he drawled, reflectively, "seeing she hasn't any masts left to
cut away, nor any cargo to--stay, you might throw over some of the
heaviest of the passengers if you think it would do any good."

It was a happy thought--the intuition of genius. Walking rapidly forward
to the foc'sle, which, being highest out of water, was crowded with
passengers, I seized a stout old gentleman by the nape of the neck,
pushed him up to the rail, and chucked him over. He did not touch the
water: he fell on the apex of a cone of sharks which sprang up from the
sea to meet him, their noses gathered to a point, their tails just
clearing the surface. I think it unlikely that the old gentleman knew
what disposition had been made of him. Next, I hurled over a woman and
flung a fat baby to the wild winds. The former was sharked out of sight,
the same as the old man; the latter divided amongst the gulls.

I am relating these things exactly as they occurred. It would be very
easy to make a fine story out of all this material--to tell how that,
while I was engaged in lightening the ship, I was touched by the
self-sacrificing spirit of a beautiful young woman, who, to save the
life of her lover, pushed her aged mother forward to where I was
operating, imploring me to take the old lady, but spare, O, spare her
dear Henry. I might go on to set forth how that I not only did take the
old lady, as requested, but immediately seized dear Henry, and sent him
flying as far as I could to leeward, having first broken his back across