And he tore a ring from his finger, stripping flesh
and skin with it, threw it down and fell dead!
But these things must not be dwelt upon. The
Boreas landed her dreadful cargo at the next large
town and delivered it over to a multitude of eager
hands and warm southern hearts—a cargo amounting
by this time to 39 wounded persons and 22 dead bodies.
And with these she delivered a list of 96 missing
persons that had drowned or otherwise perished at the
scene of the disaster.
A jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation
and inquiry they returned the inevitable American
verdict which has been so familiar to our ears all
the days of our lives—“Nobody
to blame.”
**[The incidents of the explosion are not invented.
They happened just as they are told.—The
Authors.]
Il veut faire secher de la neige au four et la vendre
pour du sel blanc.
When the Boreas backed away from the land to continue
her voyage up the river, the Hawkinses were richer
by twenty-four hours of experience in the contemplation
of human suffering and in learning through honest hard
work how to relieve it. And they were richer
in another way also. In the early turmoil an
hour after the explosion, a little black-eyed girl
of five years, frightened and crying bitterly, was
struggling through the throng in the Boreas’
saloon calling her mother and father, but no one answered.
Something in the face of Mr. Hawkins attracted her
and she came and looked up at him; was satisfied, and
took refuge with him. He petted her, listened
to her troubles, and said he would find her friends
for her. Then he put her in a state-room with
his children and told them to be kind to her (the
adults of his party were all busy with the wounded)
and straightway began his search.
It was fruitless. But all day he and his wife
made inquiries, and hoped against hope. All
that they could learn was that the child and her parents
came on board at New Orleans, where they had just arrived
in a vessel from Cuba; that they looked like people
from the Atlantic States; that the family name was
Van Brunt and the child’s name Laura. This
was all. The parents had not been seen since
the explosion. The child’s manners were
those of a little lady, and her clothes were daintier
and finer than any Mrs. Hawkins had ever seen before.
As the hours dragged on the child lost heart, and
cried so piteously for her mother that it seemed to
the Hawkinses that the moanings and the wailings of
the mutilated men and women in the saloon did not so
strain at their heart-strings as the sufferings of
this little desolate creature. They tried hard
to comfort her; and in trying, learned to love her;
they could not help it, seeing how she clung, to them
and put her arms about their necks and found-no solace
but in their kind eyes and comforting words:
