"I'm not going back to be snubbed by old Gordon; and the rest of the fellows wouldn't, if they had any spunk at all. Come, Tom, let's keep her away for Portland."
"I will not," replied Tom, decidedly; "at least, I will not unless Paul thinks we had better go there."
"I do not think so," interposed Paul. "You have done wrong, and all of you had better get in the right path as soon as possible."
"I am willing," said Tom.
"So am I," replied half a dozen others.
"The fact is, fellows," continued Tom, very earnestly, "I have had a lesson which will last me as long as I live. This is the meanest scrape I was ever concerned in, and when I get out of it I will try to do better. You needn't grin, Frank Thompson; I am ashamed of what I have done, and I confess that I am heartily sorry for it. I did more thinking last night than I ever did in seven years before."
"Humph!" sneered Frank.
"I don't care what you say, Frank; if it is in my power to reform my life, I mean to do it."
Tom continued his remarks in quite an eloquent strain, declaring that, in the perils of the stormy night through which they had passed, he had thought of all the wrong he had ever done, and resolved to be a better boy. Above all things, he said, he had learned the necessity of obedience; and that because he had refused to obey Captain Gordon, he had been glad to obey the orders of Paul Duncan, a boy like himself.
"That schooner is bearing down upon us," said Samuel Nason, pointing to a vessel over the weather quarter.