"You will get no sleep if you run all night."
"I think we shall want another fireman."
"You will: for in order to keep your engagements you will occasionally have to run nights."
At eight o'clock the Woodville landed her passengers at Port Rock, and as the gentlemen went ashore, they gave three cheers for the little steamer and her little captain.
CHAPTER XVII
BURLINGTON TO ISLE LA MOTTE
On his way home, Mr. Sherwood went to the ferry-house and satisfied himself that the mortgage on the place had been canceled. Mrs. Wilford was profuse in the expression of her gratitude to him for his kindness to the family, and hoped that Lawry and his father would be able to pay him back the whole sum.
"Mrs. Wilford, so far as gratitude and obligation are concerned, the balance is still largely against me. Millions of dollars would not pay the debt I owe to your son."
"Oh, Lawry don't think anything of that, sir!"
"But I do. Madam, if your son had been five minutes later than he was when the little steamer went down, Miss Fanny Grant would certainly have been drowned, and my wife would doubtless have shared her fate. And when I think that this exposure of their precious lives was my own fault; that my wife and her sister had nearly perished by my foolish haste and recklessness, I feel like giving every dollar I have in the world to Lawry. You don't understand this matter as I do, Mrs. Wilford."