ere landing, had been twice washed off. So at least it may well have seemed to those on board. All we know is that Angelo was in the steward’s arms to be taken on shore, when the deck was swept away; and that, by Mrs. Hasty’s account, the sailors “had just persuaded her [Madame Ossoli] to trust herself to a plank, when the final wave broke over the vessel.”[1]
Two of the four sailors reached land alive; and the still warm bodies of the child and steward came ashore. This shows that, even at the last, rescue would not have been impossible, had the life-boat been launched. The whole case is probably summed up in the remark made by one of the life-boat men to the Rev. W. H. Channing, — from whom I have it in writing, — “Oh! if we had known there were any such persons of importance on board, we should have tried to do our best.” It was natural for the passengers on the wreck to suppose that the life-boat men were there to do their best in any case.
Two only of Margaret Ossoli’s treasures reached the land, — the beautiful body of her child, and a trunk holding the letters that had passed between herself and her husband. The body of little Angelo was placed in a seaman’s chest, while his rough playmates stood tearfully around, and was afterwards buried among the sand-hills; to be at last disinterred and brought to Mount Auburn Cemetery by the relatives who had never seen
- ↑ At Home and Abroad, Appendix, p. 451.
