“I does!” Jacky declared.
“I—I—I’m not so sure,” I stammered, taking a tighter grip on the gunwale, “but I wisht we was—there—too.”
“You’ll be wishin’ that often,” said Skipper Tommy, pointedly, “if you lives t’ be so old as me.”
We wished it often, indeed, that day—while the wind blustered yet more wildly out of the north and the waves tumbled aboard our staggering little craft and the night came apace over the sea—and we have wished it often since that old time, have Jacky and I, God knows! I had the curious sensation of fear, I fancy—though I am loath to call it that—for the first time in my life; and I was very much relieved when, at dusk, we rounded the looming Watchman, ran through the white waters and thunderous confusion of the Gate, with the breakers leaping high on either hand, sharply turned Frothy Point and came at last into the ripples of Trader’s Cove. Glad I was, you may be sure, to find my mother waiting on my father’s wharf, and to be taken by the hand, and to be led up the path to the house, where there was spread a grand supper of fish and bread, which my sister had long kept waiting; and, after all, to be rocked in the broad window, safe in the haven of my mother’s arms, while the last of the sullen light of day fled into the wilderness and all the world turned black.
“You’ll be singin’ for me, mum, will you not?” I whispered.
“And what shall I sing, lad?” said she.
“You knows, mum.”
“I’m not so sure,” said she. “Come, tell me!”
What should she sing? I knew well, at that moment, the assurance my heart wanted: we are a God-fearing people, and I was a child of that coast; and I had then first come in from a stormy sea. There is a song——
“’Tis, ‘Jesus Saviour Pilot Me,’” I answered.