“Are you really determined to leave off drinking, or is it a mere impulse of the moment?”
“I never was more resolved to get drunk when I had come off a long voyage than I now am to keep sober.”
“You cannot do this in your own strength. I have known hundreds attempt it and fail; you do not, cannot realize the struggle it will cost. Let us ask help of God.”
We knelt down together. When I had finished, I asked him to pray; he said he could not.
“Then repeat the Lord’s Prayer with me; we are together in this thing and must both have our hands on the rope.” He did so, and added to it,” God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
“Your appetites and passions, Ben, have got you under their feet, and you must have help outside of yourself; so long as you seek it where we have sought it together this morning you will succeed.”
The next week he shipped for Australia. For five years I had seen him go from the house on different voyages, and he had always gone so intoxicated as to be barely able to sit in the wagon and unable to get aboard without help. The captain or mate would often say to the “runners”:—
“What did you bring that drunken fellow here for? I was to have good men from your place.” And the invariable reply would be:—
“Captain, he will be the best man in the ship when the rum’s out of him. He’s a bully man.”
This time he went aboard sober and fit for any duty, and came home as second mate of the ship. He was no longer Ben Bolt, but men who had been in the ship with him and whom he brought to the Home, called him Mr. Adams, William Adams.