The String of Pearls (1850), p. 715

"Hands off!" growled a voice. "Everybody for himself here. Hands off, I say."
"What do you mean?" said Todd. "Do you speak to me?"
The voice had sounded close to him ; and now again, with an angry tone, it cried—
"Some one has got hold of my leg!"
"Oh, I dare say I have," said Todd, " but I didn't know. There, I have left go. Who are you, sir, eh?"
"Oh! don't bother !"
"Well, but is there any danger?"
"Danger! I rather think there is. I suppose you are the love of a passenger that the captain brought on board?"
"Yes, I am the passenger," said Todd. Why he should be called a love of a passenger he did not exactly know; but he repeated his question concerning the condition of the ship; and at the next lull of wind, for it came now very strangely in gusts, he got a not very consolatory reply.
"Why, as to danger," said the man, "that's rather past, I reckon; but, perhaps, you are a landsman, and have not yet thoroughly made up your mind."
"To what?"
"To be drowned, some day or night, as I have."
"Oh, no—no! Don't say that. Drowing is a very dreadful death, indeed. I am sure it is.''
"It may, or it may not be so," said the man, "but whether it is or not, you and I are very likely soon to find out, for the old craft is going at last."
"Going?"
"Yes. It's all up with her, and it will soon be all down with her, likewise."
"But the ship goes easier through the sea."
"Oh, ah, she's filling, you see, and settling lower down in the water, so you can't have quite so much pitching and tossing as you had an hour ago, hardly."
"You can't mean that? You do not mean to tell me that there is no hope? Oh, say not so!"
"Well, you can please yourself. I can tell you that the rudder has gone—We have not a mast standing. There is already five feet of water in the hold, and we are drifting as hard as we can upon a lee-shore, so if you can make anything satisfactory out of that, I leave you to do it."
"Did you say we were drifting to shore?"
"A lee-shore."
"Oh, dear. I'm glad to hear it. Any shore will do for me, if I can but get out of this confounded ship. What is that afar off? Is it a light? Oh, yes, it is a light."
"It is. We are on the Sussex coast, somewhere, but I can't take upon myself to say where; but it don't matter a bit, for we shall go to pieces long before we reach the surf, and then in such a sea as this you might as well try to swallow the Channel at a few draughts as to swim.''
"But I can't swim at all."
"It don't matter a bit."
"But, my dear friend
"Hold your row—I am not your dear friend nor anybody else's, just now. I tell you we shall be all drowned, and the best thing you can do, is to take it as easy as possible. What can be the good of making a fuss about it?"
This information was to Todd of so deplorable a character—for to none is death so terrible as to the guilty—that he wept aloud and screamed wIIith terror as the spray of the sea struck him on the face, and the wind roared and whistled over him.
"Oh, no—no!" he cried. "I cannot die yet—I must not. Spare me—spare me! I am afraid to die!"
"Oh, you stupid," said the sailors. "That cums now of not having had a