The storm increased in violence until it succeeded in so straining the Mudlark that she took in water like a teetotaler; then it appeared to get relief directly.  This may be said in justice to a storm at sea:  when it has broken off your masts, pulled out your rudder, carried away your boats and made a nice hole in some inaccessible part of your hull it will often go away in search of a fresh ship, leaving you to take such measures for your comfort as you may think fit.  In our case the captain thought fit to sit on the taffrail reading a three-volume novel.

Seeing he had got about half way through the second volume, at which point the lovers would naturally be involved in the most hopeless and heart-rending difficulties, I thought he would be in a particularly cheerful humor, so I approached him and informed him the ship was going down.

“Well,” said he, closing the book, but keeping his forefinger between the pages to mark his place, “she never would be good for much after such a shaking-up as this.  But, I say—­I wish you would just send the 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 the rail and pulled a double-fistful of his curly hair out.  I might proceed to state that, feeling appeased, I then stole the long boat and taking the beautiful maiden pulled away from the