“I tell you a boy who uses his mother bad is sure to suffer for it some time. I’ve seen so many cases that I know there’s such a law that governs the whole world. I thank heaven that I never brought a tear to my mother’s eyes.”
The speaker was Captain Bergen, who was talking to Fred Sanders while the two sat together on the proa, near midnight succeeding the conversation mentioned between Inez and the youth Fred.
The latter might have believed, as he had jocosely remarked, that he had captured a small party of missionaries, who were making a dead set at him; but his feelings had been touched in a most tender manner, and he had done more thinking during the last few hours than in all his previous life.
The only one on the proa who was on duty was Fred, who held the steering-oar in place, while the curiously-shaped vessel sped through the water. The sea was very calm and the wind so slight that they 219 were in reality going slower than at any previous time, and the task of guiding the boat was hardly a task at all.
Fred sat looking up at the stars half the time, with his memory and conscience doing their work. His two men had lain down, and were asleep, for they were regular in all their habits, and he had seen nothing of Inez since she had withdrawn to her “apartment.”
Mate Storms kept up a fragmentary conversation with the young captain until quite late, when he withdrew, and Fred was left with himself for fully two hours, when Mr. Bergen crept softly forth and took a seat near him, even getting in such a position that he would have been very much in the way had any emergency arisen. The captain was disposed to talk––somewhat to Fred’s dislike––for he was in that mood when he desired to be alone; but he was also in a more gracious and charitable temper than usual, and he answered the old captain quite kindly.
“You’ve a good deal to be thankful for,” said he, in reply to the remark above given. “But my mother has been in heaven for many a year.”
“She is fortunate, after all,” said the captain, with a sigh, and a far-away look over the moonlit sea.
“Yes, a great deal more fortunate than her son will ever be.”
“It all depends on you, young man,” said the captain, 220 severely. “Heaven is reached step by step, and there’s no one who cannot make it. If you haven’t started in the right direction, now’s the time to do so.”