Death was instantaneous.
[_Dictated December 20, 1906._] Six months ago, when I was recalling early days in San Francisco, I broke off at a place where I was about to tell about Captain Osborn's odd adventure at the "What Cheer," or perhaps it was at another cheap feeding-place--the "Miners' Restaurant." It was a place where one could get good food on the cheapest possible terms, and its popularity was great among the multitudes whose purses were light It was a good place to go to, to observe mixed humanity.
Captain Osborn and Bret Harte went there one day and took a meal, and in the course of it Osborn fished up an interesting reminiscence of a dozen years before and told about it.

It was to this effect: He was a midshipman in the navy when the Californian gold craze burst upon the world and set it wild with excitement.

His ship made the long journey around the Horn and was approaching her goal, the Golden Gate, when an accident happened.
"It happened to me," said Osborn.

"I fell overboard.

There was a heavy sea running, but no one was much alarmed about me, because we had on board a newly patented life-saving device which was believed to be competent to rescue anything that could fall overboard, from a midshipman to an anchor.