“Well, you seem to be in earnest in what you say, Dickinson; but I really cannot believe you are. No man who really believed in the existence of a God of Justice would continue to live a life of sin and defiance,” said the skipper.
“Wouldn’t he?” fiercely retorted the boatswain’s mate. “Supposin’ he’d done what I’ve done and lived the life I’ve lived, what would he do? Answer me that.”
“Come up to our hut next Sunday morning at eleven o’clock, and I will answer you.”
“What! do you mean to say that you’ll let me in, and them women-folks there too?”
“Certainly we will,” said Captain Staunton heartily. “We are all mortal, like yourself; and the ladies will not refuse, I am sure, to meet a man who feels as you do.”
“Then I’ll come,” exclaimed the man with a frightful oath, intended to add emphasis to his declaration, and then, as the boat’s keel grated on the beach, he and his mates sprang into the shallow water, and, lifting Bob in his impromptu stretcher carefully upon their shoulders, they proceeded with heedful steps to bear him toward the hut.
“Now, there,” remarked Captain Staunton in a low voice as they hurried on ahead to get Bob’s bunk ready for him, “there is an example of a human soul steeped in sin, yet revolting from it; struggling desperately to escape; and in its despair only dyeing itself with a deeper stain. It is a noble nature in revolt against a state of hideous ignoble slavery; and I pray God that I may find words wherewith to suitably answer his momentous question.”
“Amen,” said Lance fervently, raising his hat reverently from his head as the word passed his lips.
In another ten minutes they had poor Bob safely in the house and comfortably bestowed in his berth. The medicine-chest had been brought back in the boat and was soon conveyed to the hut; and while Lance busied himself in mixing a cooling draught for his patient, Dale, to the intense astonishment of everybody, voluntarily undertook to prepare some strengthening broth for him. The man’s supreme selfishness gave way, for the moment, to admiration of Bob’s gallant deed—so immeasurably beyond anything of which he felt himself capable—and, genuinely ashamed of himself, for perhaps the first time in his life, he suddenly resolved to do what little in him lay to be useful.
When Lance came down-stairs for a moment after administering the saline draught, he found Dickinson and his three companions still hanging about outside the door in an irresolute manner, as though undecided whether to go or stay. He accordingly went out to them and, with an earnestness quite foreign to his usual manner, thanked them warmly yet courteously for their valuable assistance (Lance never forgot that he was a gentleman, and was therefore uniformly courteous to everybody), and then dismissed them, adding at the last moment a word or two of reminder to Dickinson as to his promise for the following Sunday, which he emphasised with a hearty shake of the hand.