“Because he held the ladder for me,” I answered.
“And you let him stay below while you escaped,” she cried, her eyes flooding scorn and contempt. “You, a sailor, let him die, and ran to save yourself?”
“Only after he refused to go. I did all I could to persuade him,” I answered.
She looked long and steadily at me. Then she turned and went slowly below, and I saw her no more on board. We ran in between the Chesapeake Capes, and Jones, Ernest, and myself were soon given our liberty.
I took command of a coaster running general cargo to Havana, and before I sailed I received a letter from New York. I read it over and over many times on the run south, and finally decided to call on the writer at the end of the return voyage. But this matter has nothing further to do with the last voyage of The Gentle Hand.
Sometimes I wonder at the end of all those former shipmates of mine, all the strange, savage, and kindly crew of that old, ill-fated barque. Even Tim, the little American sailor, had a history. Where are all those faces, the strong, bad, saturnine, and jovial? They flit like phantoms through my memory,--men who have gone before. I have missed their voices often. In the deserted forecastle of some large, home-arrived ship, I have more than once half-expected to meet one or more of that last crew I sailed with as a man before the mast.
Far away offshore, in the middle of the southern ocean, I have heard that strange voice of the sea again, the low, far-reaching, vibrating murmur that thrills the soul of the listener until each fibre of his being responds. It is then the sailor realizes the vast world of rest and peace of the countless crews who have gone before, and wonders as though the cry came from some mighty invisible host, calling through the void of air and sunshine. He thinks of the men he once knew, and wonders. They were good. They were bad. They were a mixture of the two. But they were all human. And who shall say where they have gone?
THE END.