A man, bareheaded, and with his arms flung wildly abroad, came flying down the promenade from the steerage.

"Capitan! Capitan! There is a woman!" he shouted in nondescript English.

"She must go hout! She must go hout!" Some vital fact imparted itself to the ship's command and seemed to penetrate to the ship's heart; she stopped, as if with a sort of majestic relenting.

A tug panted to her side, and lifted a ladder to it; the bareheaded man, and a woman gripping a baby in her arms, sprawled safely down its rungs to the deck of the tug, and the steamer moved seaward again.
"What is it?
Oh, what is it ?" his wife demanded of March's share of their common ignorance.

A young fellow passing stopped, as if arrested by the tragic note in her voice, and explained that the woman had left three little children locked up in her tenement while she came to bid some friends on board good-by.
He passed on, and Mrs.March said, "What a charming face he had!" even before she began to wreak upon that wretched mother the overwrought sympathy which makes good women desire the punishment of people who have escaped danger.