"She's one of the last of the old-timers," said the captain sadly. "This was her seventieth whaling season and that's old age for ship as well as man. I wish, though——"
"What is it, Captain Murchison?" asked Colin.
"Ah, it's nothing, boy," was the reply. "Only we're foolish over things we love, and the Gull was all that I had left. It's a dark and lonely death she's having there. I wish——"
"Yes, sir?" the boy whispered.
"I wish she'd had her lights," the captain said, and his hands were trembling on the tiller, "it's hard to die in the dark."
For a moment Colin had a wild idea of leaping
into the sea and swimming to the sinking craft, and blamed himself bitterly for not having looked after the port and starboard lights at sundown, as he often did when the watch on deck was too busy to see to them. He would have given anything to have done it, rather than to have to sit beside the captain with his eyes fixed on the desolate unlighted ship! Boy though he was, he nearly broke down.
"Good-by, Gull, good-by," he heard the captain whisper under his breath.
Then, as if the ache in the boy's heart had been a flame to cross the sea, it seemed that a tiny spark kindled upon the sinking ship, and the captain, speechless for the moment, pointed at it.
"Is that a light, boy?" he said hoarsely, "or am I going mad?"