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Works: Soldiers three. The story of the Gadsbys. In black and white.
Works Soldiers three The story of the Gadsbys In black and white Author:Rudyard Kipling Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE WRECK OF THE VISIGOTH1 ' Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm bath bound the restless wave, Who bidst the mighty ocean keep Its own appointed limits ... more »deep.' The lady passengers were trying the wheezy old harmonium in front of the cuddy, because it was Sunday night. In the patch of darkness near the wheel-grating sat the Captain, and the end of his cheroot burned like a head-lamp. There was neither breath nor motion upon the waters through which the screw was thudding. They spread, dull silver, under the haze of the moonlight till they joined the low coast of Malacca away to the eastward. The voices of the singers at the harmonium were held down by the awnings, and came to us with force. ' Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea.' It was as though the little congregation were afraid of the vastness of the sea. But a laugh followed, and some one said, ' Shall we take it through again a little quicker?' Then the Captain told the story of just such a night, lowering his voice for fear of disturbing the music and the minds of the passengers. ' She was the Visigoth, — five hundred tons, or it may have been six, — in the coasting trade ; one of the best steamers and best found on the Kutch-Kasauli line.She wasn't six years old when the thing happened : on just such a night as this, with an oily smooth sea, under brilliant starlight, about a hundred miles from land. To this day no one knowa really what the matter was. She was so small that she could not have struck even a log in the water without every soul on board feeling the jar; and even if she had struck something, it wouldn't have made her go down as she did. I was fourth officer then; we had about seven saloon passengers, including the Captain's wife and another woman, and perhaps ...« less