Bob, the cabin-boy

by Anonymous

But Bob had a mother. Yes, that was she on her last sick bed; all the long years since his father had died she had worked hard to get enough to live on with her little boy through heat and cold, and wet and dry, till at last she was worked out, and she lay down to die.

She had been a good mother to Bob; she had read the Bible to him, and told him all about God, and the good place up in the skies where his papa had gone, and where she was going, and where he too would go if he were good. And Bob loved his mother very dearly, and he loved the Bible and he loved God. A very good boy was little Bob; but O it was a sad, sad day to him when his mother died.

He sat by her side all the time she was sick, and read to her from the Bible, and talked with her till he felt as if his little heart was ready to break. “Mother, O mother, take me with you, will you not? What will become of your little Bob when you are gone? I shall have no place to live in. I would so much rather die and go to the good place with you.”

“Yes, my child,” the mother would say, “it grieves me to the heart to leave you here, and I cannot tell where you will go; but the good Lord will take care of you, and it will not be long ere you will come to be with me. Be a very good boy. Always be ready to do a kind act to all that come in your way, and you will find friends. Come and kiss me, my boy;” and then the poor child would lay his head on the bedside and sob himself to sleep.

The poor woman had a few friends, but they were as poor as herself, and had little mouths in their own houses to feed. But one that lived near by said that he would take poor Bob and care for him till he could find some one else to take him, and so the poor woman died with a smile on her face.

Spring came. The leaves were on the trees, and the grass was green on the hill-sides and in the graveyard; but it had not grown much on the new made grave, when a place was found for Bob as cabin-boy on board of a ship. It was not such a place as his mother would have wished for her boy, but it was the best that could be done then, and the poor man felt as if he could keep him no longer. And so he went, and though his little heart was ready to burst with grief, he would say to himself, “I must do good and I will get friends, and it is only a little while till I go to be with my mother.”

Sailors are a hard set of men. They were so on the ship where Bob was. They would swear, and drink, and fight, and at first they made fun of poor Bob; but he was so active, and so ready to learn, and so willing to do any little thing for them, that he soon got their goodwill, though on the whole he led a hard life of it.

The captain was a proud, cold, hard man, and the sailors did not like him. After a while he was taken sick, and they would none of them mind him. They took the care of the ship into their own hands, and if the poor sick man crept out on deck they took no notice of a word he said. Then he would swear and rave away at them, and this made him so much worse that at last he was too sick to come out at all, and none of them went in to see him, so then he lay very ill and quite alone.

Little Bob saw all this, but he hardly knew what to do. The captain had always been cross to him, and now he feared he would be worse than ever. But he felt very sorry for him, and his mother’s words came to his mind, “Be kind to all,” and he said to himself, “I can but try it anyhow.”