Best of friends, whom I love dear;
Yet when he was a-called to suffer,
To him I might not then draw near.
Again I ask’d, again I pleaded,
Three times entreating,—all in vain;
They even that request refused me,
And ordered me ashore again.
As the hour drew nigh, she saw her husband appear on deck walking between two clergymen. She called to him, and he heard her voice, for he exclaimed, “There is my dear wife from Scotland.”
Then, happily, she fainted, and did not recover till some time after she was taken ashore. By this time all was over, but the poor woman could not believe it so. She hired another boat, and again reached the Sandwich. Her exclamation from the boat must have startled all who heard it. “Pass the word,” she cried in her delusion, “for Richard Parker!”
The ballad says:—