"Your staying here," I said, "cannot recall your poor father to life, and I know, if he were alive, he would wish me to take you away. He will rest quietly here, Miss Robertson, and we will close the cabin door and leave him for a while."
I drew her gently from the cabin, and when I had got her into the cuddy, I closed the door upon the dead old man, and led her by the hand to my own cabin.
"I intend," I said, "that you shall occupy this berth, and I will remove into the cabin next to this."
She answered in broken tones that she could not bear the thought of being separated from her father.
"But you will not be separated from him," I answered, "even though you should never see him more with your eyes. There is only one separation, and that is when the heart turns and the memory forgets. He will always be with you in your thoughts, a dear friend, a dear companion, and father, as in life; not absent because he is dead, since I think that death makes those whom we love doubly our own, for they become spirits to watch over us, to dwell near us, let us journey where we please, and their affection is not to be chilled by any worldly selfishness. Try to think thus of the dead. It is not a parting that should pain us. Your father has set out on his journey before you; death is but a short leave-taking, and only a man who is doomed to live for ever could look upon death as an eternal separation."
She wept quietly, and once or twice looked at me as though she would smile through her tears, to let me know that she was grateful for my poor attempts to console her; but she could not smile. Rough and idle as my words were, yet, in the fulness of my sympathy, and my knowledge of her trials, and my sense of the dangers which, even as I spoke, were raging round us, my voice faltered, and I turned to hide my face.
It happened then that my eye lighted upon the little Bible I had carried with me in all my voyages ever since I had gone to sea, and I felt that now, with the old man lying dead, and his poor child's grief, and our own hard and miserable position, was the fitting time to invoke God's mercy, and to pray to Him to watch over us.
I spoke to that effect to Miss Robertson, and said that if she consented I would call in Cornish and the steward and ask them to join us; that the boatswain was at the wheel and could not leave his post, but we might believe that the Almighty would accept the brave man's faithful discharge of his duty as a prayer, and would not overlook him, if our prayers were accepted, because he could not kneel in company with us.
"Let him know that we are praying," she exclaimed, eagerly, "and he will pray too."
I saw that my suggestion had aroused her, and at once left the cabin and went on deck, and going close to the boatswain I said—