"Where to take me?" looking far through the window into the dark.
"To the harbour," I answered softly.
"I don't know where it is."
"He knows."
"Say," and the eyes were now fixed very intently on me; "I'm goin' to ask ye a question. An' I want an answer straight—no tackin' or manoeuvrin'—d'ye think I'm dyin', Cap'n?"
"Yes," I answered; "yes, you're dying, sir."
"Then get him in," broke out poor Tim with a piteous wail as he presented himself in front of me and looked up into my face; "please get him in quick, afore he dies—that's what I fetched you for, sir—oh, please get him in."
I had seen the day when I almost feared to be alone with a dying man. What I had to say, in those days, could be as well said to others as to him. But now, as Tim besought me, and as his father looked up with eyes in which a yearning hope was already to be seen, I felt that no others must be near while I sought to help his soul. So I asked Tim and his mother if they would withdraw to the adjoining room—they should be called, I said, if the summons came apace.
Then I closed the door—for this hour had more than bridal holiness—and I gave myself in love to the dying soul. The mock heroism, the banter, fell off from him like a garment, for I think he saw I believed in God. I need not tell, must not reveal, all he disclosed to me from the dark storehouse of a wasted past. But I met him, and his crimson sins, and his accusing conscience—I met them all, and at every turn, with the Cross of the Lord Jesus and with the all-atoning grace of God. How I gloried in that hour in the great evangel! And how there rolled about me, with tides ample like the ocean's, the thought of the magnitude and infinitude of the love of Christ! And how—oh, blessed memory to my long beleaguered soul—I witnessed the ancient miracle with joy, marvelling anew at the greatness and glory of the Gospel, scorning with high contempt all that would raise its feeble hand against such power as may be seen wherever a sinful soul meets with the pardoning Lord!
Over and over again I read to him from the third of John: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son," its richness growing on my own soul as well as his.