"
"But----"
"Help those that can get well! It is, not for me to be a girl. I carry
the blood of eleven generations of soldiers in my veins!"
The physician--himself a man who had seen service in the navy in his
time--touched his hat to this little hero, and passed on.
The head engineer of the Amaranth, a grand specimen of physical manhood,
struggled to his feet a ghastly spectacle and strode toward his brother,
the second engineer, who was unhurt. He said:
"You were on watch. You were boss. You would not listen to me when I
begged you to reduce your steam. Take that!--take it to my wife and tell
her it comes from me by the hand of my murderer! Take it--and take my
curse with it to blister your heart a hundred years--and may you live so
long!"
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.
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