his arm struck through the broken planks and waving as if for the
help that could never reach him, went down into the deep.
It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stood
on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it turned to
the spot where the boat had been. The divers were down then, and
busy. They were ‘lifting’ to-day the gold found yesterday – some
five-and-twenty thousand pounds. Of three hundred and fifty
thousand pounds’ worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds’
worth, in round numbers, was at that time recovered. The great
bulk of the remainder was surely and steadily coming up. Some loss
of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at first
sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and
wide over the beach, like sea-shells; but most other golden
treasure would be found. As it was brought up, it went aboard the
Tug-steamer, where good account was taken of it. So tremendous had
the force of the sea been when it broke the ship, that it had
beaten one great ingot of gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece
of her solid iron-work: in which, also, several loose sovereigns
that the ingot had swept in before it, had been found, as firmly
embedded as though the iron had been liquid when they were forced
there. It had been remarked of such bodies come ashore, too, as
had been seen by scientific men, that they had been stunned to
death, and not suffocated. Observation, both of the internal
change that had been wrought in them, and of their external
expression, showed death to have been thus merciful and easy. The
report was brought, while I was holding such discourse on the
beach, that no more bodies had come ashore since last night. It
began to be very doubtful whether many more would be thrown up,
Page 3
Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
until the north-east winds of the early spring set in. Moreover, a
great number of the passengers, and particularly the second-class
women-passengers, were known to have been in the middle of the ship
when she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen
upon them after yawning open, and would keep them down. A diver
made known, even then, that he had come upon the body of a man, and
had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight; but
that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains, he
had left it where it was.
It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as being
then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left
home for Wales. I had heard of that clergyman, as having buried
many scores of the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his
house and heart to their agonised friends; of his having used a
most sweet and patient diligence for weeks and weeks, in the
performance of the forlornest offices that Man can render to his
kind; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly devoted himself to
the dead, and to those who were sorrowing for the dead. I had said
to myself, ‘In the Christmas season of the year, I should like to
see that man!’ And he had swung the gate of his little garden in
coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago.
So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true
practical Christianity ever is! I read more of the New Testament
in the fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five
minutes, than I have read in anathematising discourses (albeit put
to press with enormous flourishing of trumpets), in all my life. I
heard more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing
to say about its owner, than in all the would-be celestial pairs of
bellows that have ever blown conceit at me.
We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the
loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying
water, and other obstructions from which frost and snow had lately