"Row back!" she gasped, "row back and see if we cannot pick some
of them up."
"No! no!" shouted Meeson; "they will sink the boat!"
"'Taint much use anyway," said Johnnie. "I doubt that precious few of
them will come up again. They have gone too deep!"
However, they got the boat's head round again--slowly enough, Augusta
thought--and as they did so they heard a feeble cry or two. But by the
time that they had reached the spot where the Kangaroo went down, there
was no living creature to be seen; nothing but the wash of the great
waves, over which the mist once more closed thick and heavy as a pall.
They shouted, and once they heard a faint answer, and rowed towards it;
but when they got to the spot whence the sound seemed to proceed, they
could see nothing except some wreckage. They were all dead, their agony
was done, their cries no more ascended to the pitiless heavens; and wind,
and sky, and sea were just as they had been.
"Oh, my God! my God!" wept Augusta, clinging to the thwarts of the
tossing boat.
"One boat got away--where is it?" asked Mr. Meeson, who, a wet and
wretched figure, was huddled up in the stern-sheets, as he rolled his
wild eyes round striving to pierce the curtain of the mist.
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