This had happened repeatedly, and more than once Captain Bergen had laboriously made his way up the smooth mast to the very top, where he swung his hat wildly; but it must have been that the little island in the South Seas possessed slight interest in the eyes of the navigators who occasionally drifted in that direction, for had they seen the signal of distress, or caught 167 sight of the man frantically waving his hat from the top, they would have learned what its meaning was.
The greatest dejection which took possession of the couple was when they, through the glass, saw the Stars and Stripes fluttering from the mizzen of the ship which came the nearest and then made off again. The sight of that most beautiful banner in the world was like a glimpse of their distant New England home, and they seemed to feel the cool breeze fanning their hot brows as it bore steadily toward them.
When it went over the convex sea out of sight, Captain Bergen covered his face with his hands and wept, and when, after awhile, he looked up again, he saw the tears on the cheeks of Abe Storms, who stood motionless and gazing silently off upon the deep, as if he expected the vessel would come back to them. It was a severe blow, and it was a long time before they recovered from it.
The exact age of Inez Hawthorne when she became, by an extraordinary turn of the wheel of fortune, the protégée of the two sailors, was, as given by herself, six years, but both the captain and mate were confident that she was fully one, if not two years older.
Now, at the termination of the period named, she was a girl as fully developed mentally and physically as one of a dozen years, and she was growing into a woman of striking beauty. She was still a child, with 168 all the innocence and simplicity which distinguished her at the time she was taken from the deck of the steamer Polynesia, but in a few years more, should she be spared, she would become a woman.
Captain Bergen and Mate Storms were honest, conscientious men, and Christians, and they performed their full duty in that most important respect to Inez Hawthorne. Never passed a day in which Storms did not read, in an impressive voice, from the great Book of all books, and the sublime passages, the wonderful precepts, the divine truths and the sacred instruction from that volume were seed which fell upon good ground and bore its fruit in due season.
If ever there was a good, pure, devout Christian, Inez Hawthorne became one, and her greatest desire, as she repeatedly expressed it, was that she might go out in the great world among all people, and do her utmost to carry the glad tidings to them.
“The time will come,” replied Abe Storms, when he listened to these glowing wishes. “God never intended you should live and die upon this lonely island when there is such need for missionaries like you. I don’t see that we are of much account, but I believe He has something for us, too, and we shall be given the opportunity to do it.”
“Ah,” said the skipper, with a sigh, “you have been saying that for three years, and the sails that come go 169 again and care nothing for us. I am beginning to believe we are to stay here for the rest of our lives, and that I am to be the first one to take the long, last sleep that awaits us all.”