The rain, too, poured down in such torrents that we
were all of us presently wet through. We had been, I apprehend, more
than an hour in this situation, when the boatmen began to complain of
cold and weariness. I saw, also, that they began to be uneasy, for they
did not know where they were. They had no way of forming any judgment
about their course, but by knowing the point from whence the wind blew,
and by keeping the boat in a relative position towards it. I encouraged
them as well as I could, though I was beginning to be uneasy myself, and
also sick. In about a quarter of an hour they began to complain again.
They said they could pull no longer. They acknowledged, however, that
they were getting nearer to the shore, though on what part of it they
could not tell. I could do nothing but bid them hope. They then began to
reproach themselves for having come out with me. I told them I had not
forced them, but that it was a matter of their own choice. In the midst
of this conversation I informed them that I thought I saw either a star
or a light straight forward. They both looked at it and pronounced it to
be a light, and added with great joy that it must be a light in the
Passage-house; and so we found it; for in about ten minutes afterwards
we landed, and, on reaching the house, learnt that a servant maid had
been accidentally talking to some other person on the stair-case, near a
window, with a candle in her hand, and that the light had appeared to us
from that circumstance.
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