they came up the ship's side with tired and disappointed looks, unaccompanied by their poor comrade, and not having been able even to recover the life buoy which had been thrown overboard the moment that the accident was discovered. The irrepressible curiosity of the emigrants (of whom we had a good many on board) during so much excitement and alarm, led them to invade the forbidden precincts of the poop itself, where they created so much confusion, that the captain not only ordered them all off at once, but, as a punishment, sent them down below under hatches, to remain there until the return of the boat.
A little time afterwards, as I was descending the poop-ladder, my eyes encountered the strange apparition of a female head upon a level with the quarter-deck, reminding me of the heads without bodies ranged upon the shelves of Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. To strengthen the resemblance, the throat of the solitary head was bound by the narrow red rim of a deck-ventilator; but the illusion thus created was counterbalanced by the strong expression of curiosity in the wide open eyes, utterly unlike the closed orbs of the decapitated models in Baker Street. I recognized the features as those of one of the emigrant girls, who, having pushed her head through the orifice as if it had been a chimney, was now resting her chin in a raised position upon the edge of it—an attitude which would have been considered martyrdom if otherwise than self-imposed, but cheerfully sustained, in the hope of circumventing the captain by obtaining a glimpse of what was going on.
It takes but a little time to wind up the worldly affairs of the poor, and in the evening of the same day on which the poor young seaman was lost, his very small chest was
