A FATAL DISASTER. 167 



latter a little girl, whose parents were in India. The 

 child was to be bathed, but the sea was high, and she 

 did not like it. When she had been dipped twice, 

 she begged that it might sufl&ce, but all protested that 

 she must have her full allowance of three dips. The 

 aunt accordingly plunged her a third time, but at 

 that instant a heavy wave coming in took the child 

 out of the grasp of her relative, and bore her back 

 beyond reach. The tide was setting down, and the 

 party had the agony of seeing their little companion 

 carried rapidly away across the mouth of the cove 

 towards the Tunnel rocks. 



A young man, a relative, I believe, of one of the 

 ladies, instantly stripped and swam after the child, 

 who still floated. He succeeded in catching her, but 

 so fast had the tide swept her down, that he had to 

 land on the Tunnel side of the cove, and then to 

 climb the precipitous cliffs with his helpless burden 

 in one arm. She was found, however, to be quite 

 dead, and no appliances could restore her. 



The aunt was like a maniac ; crying and tear- 

 ing her hair in distraction. They put her into 

 one of the bathing machines until the first paroxysm 

 of her grief had exhausted itself; but she never reco- 

 vered the shock. She used long afterwards to come 

 down to the fatal spot, and gaze out upon the sea in 

 hopeless and speechless melancholy, a melancholy 

 that never left her. 



To complete the sad story, the parents of the child, 

 who had not heard of the event, were returning from 

 India shortly after, when the ship was wrecked, and 

 they too were both drowned. 



