Thus, by the time that Augusta, Mrs.
Thomas, and Dick were safe on shore, their story, or rather sundry distorted versions of it, was flashing up the wires to the various press agencies, and running through Southampton like wild-fire.

Scarcely were their feet set upon the quay, when, with a rush and a bound, wild men, with note-books in their hands, sprang upon them, and beat them down with a rain of questions.

Augusta found it impossible to answer them all at once, so contented herself with saying, "Yes," "Yes," "Yes," to everything, out of which mono-syllable, she afterwards found to her surprise, these fierce and active pressmen contrived to make up a sufficiently moving tale; which included glowing accounts of the horrors of the shipwreck, and, what rather took her aback, a positive statement that she and the sailors had lived for a fortnight upon the broiled remains of Mr.Meeson.One interviewer, being a small man, and, therefore, unable to kick and fight his way through the ring which surrounded Augusta and Mrs.Thomas, seized upon little Dick, and commenced to chirp and snap his fingers at him in the intervals of asking him such questions as he thought suitable to his years.
Dick, dreadfully alarmed, fled with a howl; but this did not prevent a column and a half of matter, headed "The Infant's Tale of Woe," from appearing that very day in a journal noted for the accuracy and unsensational character of its communications.

Nor was the army of interviewers the only terror that they had to face.

Little girls gave them bouquets; an old lady, whose brain was permeated with the idea that shipwrecked people went about in a condition of undress for much longer than was necessary after the event, arrived with an armful of under-clothing streaming on the breeze; and last, but not least, a tall gentleman, with a beautiful moustache, thrust into Augusta's hand a note hastily written in pencil, which, when opened, proved to be an _offer of marriage_! However, at last they found themselves in a first-class carriage, ready to start, or rather starting.