The Uncommercial Traveller | Page 3

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, 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 thawed. It was
a mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the way) to suppose that
the peasantry had shown any superstitious avoidance of the drowned;
on the whole, they had done very well, and had assisted readily. Ten
shillings had been paid for the bringing of each body up to the church,
but the way was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was wrapped in
a sheet) were necessary, and three or four men, and, all things
considered, it was not a great price. The people were none the richer for
the wreck, for it was the season of the herring-shoal--and who could
cast nets for fish, and find dead men and women in the draught?
He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard