Ben, thanking the captain, left the cabin, highly pleased at the praise he had received, and very glad also to get the sovereign; not that he might spend it on himself, but that he might send it home to his mother; and he had some notion that he could do so by some means or other, but how, he could not tell. He would consult Mr Martin.
“Oh, it was to get that gold sovereign which made you so eager about going aloft of late,” observed Tom, who was somewhat jealous of his companion.
“Yes. I wanted it to send to my mother,” answered Ben quietly.
“But she can’t want it. I never send my mother anything, nor does father, that I know of,” exclaimed Tom. “Much better, Ben, to spend it like a man ashore. We could have rare fun with it, depend on that.”
“My mother is a widow, and that is one reason why she should want the money, though yours doesn’t,” said Ben. “Then, though I came to sea in the hope of finding Ned, I also came that I might get money to take care of mother in her old age; so I think it right to send her the first sovereign I have got, and I hope that it will be followed by many more.”
“You are always talking about doing right in this thing and that; but how do you know what is right?” exclaimed Tom, vexed at the idea that he should not benefit, as he thought he ought to do, by the gift his messmate had received.
“How can you ask that?” said Ben. “Haven’t we got the Bible to show us in the first place, and if we can’t make up our minds clearly on the matter from it, which, I allow, is possible, then cannot we pray to be guided aright? and does not God promise that He will hear our prayers, and send the Holy Spirit to guide us?”
“Yes, I know all that,” answered Tom, turning away. In truth, Tom ought to have known it as well as Ben, for his father had frequently told him the same; but, though he had heard, the words had passed from one ear out at the other: he had not taken them in.
Early in the day the master had stated the hour at which the coast-line of South America would be seen; for the mountains Ben had discovered are several miles inland, and are many thousand feet high—indeed, the range of the Andes is one of the highest in the world. It now appeared at the hour the master said it would, standing up rocky and broken, from the very margin of the ocean. As the frigate drew nearer, the land looked very dry and barren, and utterly unworthy of the name it bears.
“If you were to see it in winter, just after the rains are over, you would speak very differently of it,” observed Mr Martin, who had been there before. “Never judge of things, and, above all, of countries, at first sight. At the right time this country looks as green and fresh and beautiful a country as you need ever wish to see.”