It was a true story, too--about Captain Rounceville's shipwreck
--true in every detail. It was to this effect:
Captain Rounceville's vessel was lost in mid-Atlantic, and likewise his
wife and his two little children. Captain Rounceville and seven seamen
escaped with life, but with little else. A small, rudely constructed
raft was to be their home for eight days. They had neither provisions
nor water. They had scarcely any clothing; no one had a coat but the
captain. This coat was changing hands all the time, for the weather was
very cold. Whenever a man became exhausted with the cold, they put the
coat on him and laid him down between two shipmates until the garment and
their bodies had warmed life into him again. Among the sailors was a
Portuguese who knew no English. He seemed to have no thought of his own
calamity, but was concerned only about the captain's bitter loss of wife
and children. By day he would look his dumb compassion in the captain's
face; and by night, in the darkness and the driving spray and rain, he
would seek out the captain and try to comfort him with caressing pats on
the shoulder.
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