Brown; as any one might see
by her lines, even that way off. Ah, poor dear!"
"And so many brave souls on board; and, perhaps, some of them not
ready, Mr. Beer," says the serious elderly chief boatman. "Eh, Captain
Willis?"
"The Lord has had mercy on them, I don't doubt." answers the old man,
in his quiet sweet voice. "One can't but hope that he would give them
time for one prayer before all was over; and having been drowned
myself, Mr. Brown, three times, and taken up for dead--that is,
once in Gibraltar Bay, and once when I was a total wreck in the old
Seahorse, that was in the hurricane in the Indies; after that when
I fell over quay-head here, fishing for bass,--why, I know well how
quick the prayer will run through a man's heart, when he's a-drowning,
and the light of conscience, too, all one's life in one minute,
like--"
"It arn't the men I care for," says Gentleman Jan; "they're gone to
heaven, like all brave sailors do as dies by wreck and battle: but the
poor dear ship, d'ye see, Captain Willis, she ha'n't no heaven to go
to, and that's why I feel for her so."
Both the old men shake their heads at Jan's doctrine, and turn the
subject off.
"You'd better go home, Captain, 'fear of the rheumatics. It's a rough
night for your years; and you've no call, like me."
"I would, but my maid there; and I can't get her home; and I can't
leave her." And Willis points to the schoolmistress, who sits upon
the flat slope of rock, a little apart from the rest, with her face
resting on her hands, gazing intently out into the wild waste.
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