But at night it was intense, chilling every one to the bone and spinal marrow.
They lay there pressed together; not a corner of the sail was left open to admit a breath of the frost-laden air, but even then they were not warm. It was impossible to sleep for hours and hours after lying down, and when at last they did drop off, the cold, the bitter, bitter cold, was with them still—with them in their dreams, with them in their hearts, and on their very brains.
When morning light came they would stagger up, looking wonderingly at each other’s pale, pinched faces. To stand for a time was an impossibility. They managed to light a little fire of wood on an iron slab, morning, noon, and evening, to make a little coffee; this, with biscuit and raw pork, was their only diet, and right thankful they were to have such fare.
It was on a Tuesday the Fairy Queen went down, and five long weary days rolled slowly on their course. For five weary nights they suffered and shivered, and when the Sabbath morning came round they were, to all appearance, as far from help as ever.
Hope itself began to fade in their hearts, especially when two of their number sank and died before their eyes.
They committed their bodies to the deep, and, horrible to relate, saw them devoured; for till now they had no idea that the sea around them was swarming with sharks. Some they had seen, it is true, but nothing like the number that now came up to the ghastly feast.
It was the Sabbath, and although every morning and evening they had prayed and sung hymns, after the fashion common in Scotland on this day—His day—many chapters of the Book of books were read, and first Douglas and then Leonard gave the men some earnest exhortations. Leonard never knew his friend Douglas could speak so feelingly before, or that his heart was such a well—now bubbling over—of religious feeling and fervour.
“Ah, my dear fellows!” he ended with these words, “we never really feel our need of a Saviour until the prospect of death stares us in the face. Then we feel the need of a friend, and, looking around, as it were, we find Him by our side, and right willing are we to take Him then, to grasp His hand, and trust our all in all to Him.”
“Amen!” said the sailors fervently.
Then some verses of that bonnie hymn-psalm were sung, commencing:—