"I should like to know what you are thinking about, Wal."
"You see that little cove the river has eaten out of the bank?"
"You mean where the moonlight is shining on that large rock, and beside which a tree is growing?"
"That is the spot. Well, the Saturday afternoon before I was going to sea for the first time, in the Madras, I went to the catechising, because I knew that I should find all the boys and girls there, and I wanted to bid them good by. After that I kept on to Charlie Bell's. It was a moonlight evening, just like this; and after supper we went to the head of Pleasant Cove, sat down, and leaned our backs against an oak, just as you and I are leaning against this pine. We could hear the brook that runs through his field, behind us, just as we can hear this stream below, and the ripple of the tide as it crept along the beach. I felt tender that night, for I loved Charlie Bull dearly. You know, Ned, how a boy feels, if he does want to go, when the time comes."
"That I do. When he's thinking about going, longing to be off, and his folks trying to put him off the notion, then he's all stirred up, and only thinks about getting away; but, when they've given their consent, he has signed the articles, packed his chest, got his protection at the Custom house, is sure of going, and all is settled, then, if he has a good home, and any soul in him, it will give him the heartache to say good by. There never was a boy more crazy to go to sea than I was—counting the days till the vessel was ready. She lay in the stream, ready to sail in the morning. After supper the second mate took me and three men whom he could trust, and went ashore. We were ordered to be down to the boat at nine o'clock. It was seven when I reached home. Didn't those two hours go quick as I sat on the sofa in the parlor, between father and mother, and my sisters before me. When the bell rang for nine, and I got up to start for the beach, I didn't feel altogether so keen for going as I did the week before."
"That was what I meant. I felt just so that night, while Charlie and I sat together at the head of Pleasant Cove, beneath the oak, and he talked to me."
"What did he say?"
"A great many things. He wanted me to love God and pray to him; he said there would be nights at sea when the moon would be shining on the ocean, just as it was then upon the waters of that cove; that he should look at it and think of me; hoped I would look at it and think of him and his words; and that as the same planets were above us, so the same God was around our daily paths; that perhaps when I thought that some dear friend I loved much was thinking of and praying for me, I should feel I ought to pray for myself."
"Have you never thought of it before to-night?"
"Thought of it? Yes, truly. On many a bright moonlight night, when you and I have been pacing the deck together, have I been occupied with those memories. You may think it strange, but they were in my mind when the shot from that English ship of the line was flying round us; but the moon shining on the water in that little bight, the sound of the stream, as we sit against this pine, and perhaps what we have just been doing, bring it home as never before."