“No-o. But I was near it—mighty near it. They seen me go, an’ I heard the cry, ‘Man overboard!’ when I come up after my first plunge. I knowed they’d wear ship and send a boat after me. So, first off, I thought I’d hang to the balehook and be all right. “But I got ’nough o’ that soon—yes’m! The waves was monster tall. One seized me and the bale o’ cotton, an’ we shot right up to the crest of it. Then I found myself fallin’ down on ’tother side, an’ that cotton bale tumblin’ after me. I had to get out o’ the way of that bale in a hurry, or it might have swiped me a blow that I’d never come up from. An’ I wasn’t much of a swimmer.” The little girl’s eyes were round with interest and her lips were parted. She drank in every word the old sailor uttered. “Well, there I was, little miss,” he said, still puffing on his pipe. “There was sev’ral of them cotton bales had been slid overboard about the same time, an’ I found myself a-dodgin’ of ’em. Fust one, then another, come after me—it seemed as if they was determined to git me. “When I warn’t lookin’ for it, the end of one bale clumped me right in the back. I went down that time, I thought, for keeps. “Down and down I went, till all I could see above me was green water streaked with white. I couldn’t git my breath; but otherwise, mind ye, I wasn’t in much trouble. I jest floated there, and I didn’t much care to come up. I didn’t care for anything. “Lots o’ things I’d done, good an’ bad, chased through my head,” went on Benjamin. “I remembered folks I hadn’t thought of for years. My mother and father come to me—jest as plain! An’ them dead for a long time.” “Oh! did you see _ghosts_?” Carolyn May exclaimed. “Not to frighten me,” the sailor assured her. “It was jest as though I was sittin’ in a rockin’-chair, half asleep, an’ these dreams come to me. I warn’t in any pain. It was a lot worse when the boys reached me in the boat an’ hauled me inboard. “_Then_,” said the old man with vigour, “it cost me something. Comin’ back from drowning is a whole lot worse than bein’ drowned. You take it from me.” “Well,” sighed Carolyn May, “I’m glad to know that. It’s bothered me a good deal. If my mamma and papa had to be dead, maybe that was the nicest way for them to go. “Only—only,” confessed the little girl, “I’d feel so much better if they’d been brought back and we could have buried them behind the church, like Aunty Rose’s babies and her spouse. And—and I’d feel better yet if they weren’t dead at all!” CHAPTER XIX—A GOOD DEAL OF EXCITEMENT Tim, the hackman, had an accident to his load before he was ready to start from the camp after dinner. He was hauling maple and other hardwood logs to the turning mill at Sunrise Cove; and, the team he worked being a sturdy pair of animals, he piled a heavy cargo on the jumper. Just as he called to Carolyn May to hop upon the load for the ride home the horses started. “Hey, you!” sang out the hack driver. “What d’ye think you’re doin’? Hey, there! Whoa!”