“Thank you, Caroline,” he answered. “I appreciate your askin’ me, I sartinly do. And I’d rather go with you than anybody else on earth. But I was cal’latin’ to hunt up some little round-the-corner chapel, or Bethel, where I’d feel a little bit at home. I guess likely your church is a pretty big one, ain’t it?”
“We attend Saint Denis. It is a large church, but we have always been connected with it. Stephen and I were christened there. But, of course, if you had rather go somewhere else—”
“No, no! I hadn’t anywhere in particular to go. I’m a Congregationalist to home, but Abbie says I’ve spread my creed so wide that it ain’t more’n an inch deep anywhere, and she shouldn’t think ’twould keep me afloat. I tell her I’d rather navigate a broad and shallow channel, where everybody stands by to keep his neighbor off the shoals, than I would a narrow and crooked one with self-righteousness off both beams and perdition underneath.
“You see,” he added, reflectively, “the way I look at it, it’s a pretty uncertain cruise at the best. Course there’s all sorts of charts, and every fleet is sartin it’s got the only right one. But I don’t know. We’re afloat—that much we are sure of—but the port we left and the harbor we’re bound for, they’re always out of sight in the fog astern and ahead. I know lots of folks who claim to see the harbor, and see it plain; but they don’t exactly agree as to what they see. As for me, I’ve come to the conclusion that we must steer as straight a course as we can, and when we meet a craft in distress, why, do our best to help her. The rest of it I guess we must leave to the Owner, to the One that launched us. I.... Good land!” he exclaimed, coming out of his meditation with a start, “I’m preachin’ a sermon ahead of time. And the Commodore’s goin’ to sleep over it, I do believe.”
The butler, who had been staring vacantly out of the window during the captain’s soliloquy, straightened at the sound of his nickname, and asked hastily, “Yes, sir? What will you have, sir?” Captain Elisha laughed in huge enjoyment, and his niece joined him.
“Well,” she said, “will you go with me?”
“I’d like to fust-rate—if you won’t be too much ashamed of me.”
“Then it’s settled, isn’t it? The service begins at a quarter to eleven. We will leave here at half-past ten.”
The captain shaved with extra care that morning, donned spotless linen, including a “stand-up” collar—which he detested—brushed his frock-coat and his hair with great particularity, and gave Edwards his shoes to clean. He would have shined them himself, as he always did at home, but on a former occasion when he asked for the “blackin’ kit,” the butler’s shocked and pained expression led to questions and consequent enlightenment.
He was ready by a quarter after ten, but when his niece knocked at his door she bore a message which surprised and troubled him.