Night followed, and one by one the stars appeared in the mighty blue dome overhead; there was no moon as yet, and I thought of hoisting a light at the mainmast head, but where were a lantern and matches to be found?
I thought also of lifting the fore-hatch, to explore the fore-part of the schooner, but I felt too feeble and sick at heart; and now with the gloom of night the ghost-story of the Dutch skipper recurred to me.
Thirst was now becoming an agony, and I inhaled the dewy atmosphere in vain, for its property was saline, and seemed to make my sufferings greater; but happily it induced a drowsiness. I crept below, and seeking the bed in the captain's berth, drew the clothes over me and strove to sleep—and so weary was I, that sleep came.
I had now been two nights and a day on board this fatal craft. My parents and my sisters—what would their thoughts, their fears, their sorrow be!
In my sleep their voices came to my ear, and I felt my mother's kiss upon my cheek so palpably, that I started and nearly awoke.
Then old Eton came before me, with its sombre brick quadrangles, its bronze statue of King Henry the Sixth; the ancient college, with its rich buttresses and carved pinnacles, and the great window, past which the Thames sweeps on to London, between its green and lovely banks.
The old monastic hall, and then the Playing Fields in all their sunny greenness, shaded by their solemn old elm trees, recurred to me; then the seclusion of the library where I had spent many an hour; then came the voices of my old companions at cricket, or shouting as they urged their trim-built skiffs, with the murmur of the river, the familiar toll of the chapel bell, and the voices of the choristers, all mingling in my dreaming ear, as with a "drowsy hum."
Anon I seemed to hear the merry English chime of bells ringing in the old square tower of Erlesmere Rectory; but they sunk amid the hiss and gurgle of the bitter surf and the moan of the midnight sea.
Now, I thought how rapturously I could have clasped my dear mother's neck! How gladly I would have obeyed my poor father and gone wherever he wished me—even to my uncle's dingy counting-house in the City, there to spend the remainder of my existence, if fate so willed it, on a tripod stool, chin-deep among red-edged ledgers, invoices, telegrams, and dockets of papers.
I endeavored to remember all my parents had taught me in their prayers and precepts, and how often I had been reminded by the good old Rector that without the knowledge of Heaven not even a sparrow could fall to the ground; and I thought that surely I must be worth a whole army of sparrows.