"Your scheme," said I, "would be a capital one providing that every man of us four had six hands and six legs, and the strength of three big Johnsons, that we could do without sleep, and split ourselves into pieces whenever we had occasion to reef topsails. But, as I am only capable of doing one man's work, and require rest like other weakly mortals, I must tell you plainly that I for one should be very sorry to undertake to work this ship to the English Channel, unless you would guarantee that by dawn this morning we should receive a draft of at least six men out of a passing vessel."
"Well, well," said the boatswain, "it was only a thought; and I don't say it is to be done."
"Not to be thought on—much less done," exclaimed Cornish.
"Don't be too sartin, friend," retorted the boatswain, turning smartly on him. "'Where there's a will there's a way,' wos a sayin' when I was a lad."
"If it comes on to blow," I put in, "it may take us all we can do to fetch Bermuda. Don't dream of aiming for a further port."
At this moment Miss Robertson returned. I asked her how she had found her father, and she replied, in a low voice, that he was sleeping, but that his breathing was very faint and uncertain, and that he sometimes talked in his sleep.
She could not disguise her anxiety, and I entreated her to go below and watch him and rest herself as well; but she answered that she would not leave the deck until I had finished taking in sail and doing what was necessary.
"You cannot tell me that I am not of use," she added. "I will steer whilst you work, and if you wish to sleep I will watch for you. Why should I not do so? I can benefit papa more by helping you to save the ship than by leaving you to work alone while I sit with him. I pray God," she said, in her sweet, low, troubled voice, "that all may go well with us. But I have been so near to death that it scarcely frightens me now. Tell me what to do and I will do it—though for your sake alone, as you would have sacrificed your life for mine. I owe you what I can never repay—and how kind, how gentle, how good you have been to my father and me!"
She spoke in so low a voice that it was impossible for any one to hear her but myself; and so greatly did her words effect me—I, who had now learnt to love her, who could indeed have died a hundredfold over for her dear sake, that I dared not trust myself to speak. Had I spoken I should have said what I was sure she would have disliked to hear from a rough sailor like me: nay, I even turned away from her that I might be silent, recoiling from my own heart's language that seemed but an impertinence, an unfair obtrusion of claims which, even though she admitted them by speaking of my having saved her life, I should have been unmanly to assert.
I quickly recovered myself, and said, forcing a laugh—