McElvina rushed out; it was but too true. The stair-carpet had not yet been laid down, and his foot had slipped at the uppermost step. He was taken up senseless, and when medical advice was procured, his head and his spine were found to be seriously injured. In a few days, during which he never spoke, old Hornblow was no more. Thus the old man, like the prophet of old, after all his toiling, was but permitted to see the promised land; and thus are our days cut short at the very moment of realising our most sanguine expectations.
Reader, let us look at home. Shall I, now thoughtlessly riding upon the agitated billow, with but one thin plank between me and death, and yet so busy with this futile work, be permitted to bring it to a close? The hand which guides the flowing pen may to-morrow be stiff; the head now teeming with its subject may be past all thought ere to-morrow’s sun is set—ay, sooner! And you, reader, who may so far have had the courage to proceed in the volumes without throwing them away, shall you be permitted to finish your more trifling task?—or, before its close, be hurried from this transitory scene where fiction ends, and the spirit, re-endowed, will be enabled to raise its eyes upon the lightning beams of unveiled truth?
Chapter Thirty.
And if you chance his shipp to borde,
This counsel I must give withall.
Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, 1560.
Discretion
And hardy valour are the twins of honour,
And, nursed together, make a conqueror!
Divided, but a talker.
Beaumont and Fletcher.
The survey having been completed, Captain M—, in pursuance of the orders which he had received, weighed his anchor, and proceeded to cruise until the want of provisions and water should compel him to return into port. For many days the look-out men at the mastheads were disappointed in their hopes of reporting a strange sail, the chase or capture of which would relieve the monotony of constant sky and water, until, one Sunday forenoon, as Captain M— was performing divine service, the man at the masthead hailed the deck with “A strange sail on the weather-bow!”
The puritan may be shocked to hear that the service was speedily, although decorously closed; but Captain M— was aware from the fidgeting of the ship’s company, upon the capstan bars, on which they were seated, that it would be impossible to regain their attention to the service, even if he had felt inclined to proceed: and he well knew, that any worship of God in which the mind and heart were not engaged, was but an idle ceremony, if not a solemn mockery. The hands were turned up—all sail was made—and in an hour, the stranger was to be seen with the naked eye from the fore-yard.
“What do you make of her, Mr Stewart?” said the first-lieutenant to him, as he sat aloft with his glass directed towards the vessel.
“A merchant ship, sir, in ballast.”