“Been prayin’?”
“It won’t do any good; I’m sure it won’t. I said it once but it don’t seem to belong to this fix.”
“’Twill help us if we prays the best we can. Dad says: ‘Do everything you sets your hand to the best un knows how; if ’tis workin’, work the best un can; if ’tis prayin’, pray the best un can.’”
“Oh, Dan, if I’d only stopped fishing when you called me! If I’d only gone back to the ship then, we’d have been all right! Oh, why didn’t I go! Why didn’t I go!”
“Maybe the Lord were plannin’ to have us go adrift, and He were keepin’ you fishin’. Dad says sometimes th’ Lord does such things to try folks out an’ see what they’ll be doin’ for theirselves.”
“No, Dan, it was my fault. Oh, why didn’t I go when you called me! Now we’ll both be drowned, and it’s all my fault.”
“Don’t be feelin’ so bad about un, Paul,” Dan soothed. “While they’s life they’s a chanst. Dad’s always sayin’ that, an’ he says, ‘If you ever gets in a tight fix, lad, do all you can to get out of un, an’ when they ain’t nothin’ more you can do, an’ you’re sartin’ they ain’t, then pray to th’ Lord, an’ leave un to He. But,’ says Dad, ‘don’t waste no time prayin’ an’ askin’ th’ Lord’s help when they’s anythin’ you can do yourself. He won’t pull you out of no scrape when you ain’t doin’ th’ things He’s laid out for you to do first.’”
“But what can we do?”
“Nothin’ but pray now. We hollered an’ fired th’ guns. I been tryin’ to think of everythin’, an’ they ain’t nothin’ else I can think of till ’tis light enough to see, an’ then maybe we’ll be findin’ a way to fix th’ boat; an’ maybe if we prays th’ Lord’ll show us a way to do un.”
The lads again lapsed into silence, to be broken finally by Paul.