A thousand confused conjectures, fears, hopes, and solicitudes flashed through Joshua’s brain. He tried to ask the Lord of all the seas, whom he had so long followed and loved, to take charge of the ship and bring her home. Her destination was no longer of moment to him, whether it were the gateways of earthly ports or the harbor lights of that haven and heaven to which he had so long aspired. And so, clumsily lashed with his back to the wheel, unyielding to the last, still fighting when the fight was done, the faint balance of sanity swung across to peace as had the sea after the storm, and dreaming that he was in his Brixham chapel on the hill, he fell to singing in a wavering voice: “Abide with Me.�
Some recess of his brain contained the words he had so many times sung, so long loved. Cracked and broken they issued between cracked and broken lips, quavering aimlessly into the air his fealty to a faith—that hymn written in the old, old port of Brixham town from which he and his forbears had sprung; and as a prelude he cried: “God, O God! Help me, for I can do no more. ‘Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.... And I am far from home.’â€�
The steam trawler Williwaw, after twenty days at sea, rimed by the storm, black, and with a heavy plume of smoke wallowing out of her funnel, was laying her course for Brixham Port. Captain Moran was staring at the streaks of rust and appeared anything but pleased by his inspection. His honest, sea-tanned face took on the look of preoccupation of one who is engaged in mental calculations as to the cost of paint. He was even disturbed when his mate Long, grave-eyed, came across the steel deck to him and said: “Looks to me, sir, as if there’s something wrong with a ship off there to sta’b’d. Her don’t act natural at all, sir.�
Captain Moran turned and trudged past the complex litter of mechanism and gear to have a look. After but a moment he shouted back to his mate: “You’re right about that, Mr. Long. Run down to ’em.�
The wheel in the pilot house of the Williwaw whirled, and she turned her nose inquisitively on the new course.
“Somethin’ wrong? Aye? There be,� declared one of the crew to others who came leisurely up to the starboard rail. “Her be in trouble, sure! Look at they sails, what’s left of ’em, and her be yawin’ this way and that as if her had no hellum.�
They heard Captain Moran shout to the pilot: “Turn her loose. Put on full speed. No use in wasting time.� And from the engine-room sounded the clang of shovel and slice-bar; the funnel plume blackened, and the Williwaw began to “foam at the mouth� as she closed down on the ketch. When her engine was rung down, a peculiar silence enveloped her that was broken by Moran’s hail:
“Ahoy there! I’ll Try! Ahoy! What’s wrong with you men?�
But he evoked no answer. Under silent way the Williwaw bore closer, and now there became faintly audible a cracked old voice monotonously droning:
“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.�