“I thought as how it was going to break but just now, Mr Hurry,” he answered, casting his eye all round the horizon. “It seems, howsomedever, to have breezed up again, and if it don’t shift before long, there’s little chance of the schooner’s living, or any of us either for that matter, many hours more.”
“We must meet our fate, then, like men, and Christians too, I hope,” I answered, looking at him. “We have done all that men can do, I believe.”
“Yes, sir, that we have,” he replied. “We can do no more, and it isn’t the first time Nol Grampus has had to look Death in the face, so I hopes that I shall not shrink from him. Come he will, I know, some day, sooner or later; and it matters little, as far as I can see, if he comes to-day or to-morrow.”
“Not if we put our trust in One who is able and willing to save our souls alive,” I observed. “That makes all the difference whether death should be feared or welcomed. It is not what we suffer in this world that we should dread, but what we may deserve to suffer in the next; in the same way it is not what we enjoy here, but what we may be able to enjoy through all eternity, that we should long for.”
“Very true, sir—very true, Mr Hurry,” replied Grampus; “but the worst is, that we don’t think of these things till just at such moments as the present, when the flood has done, and the tide of life is fast ebbing away.”
Thus we talked on for some time. I felt really with my old friend Nol, that though there we all stood in health and strength, we might soon be removed to behold the glories of the eternal world.
Suddenly Nol looked up. Holding his hand to the wind, and casting his eye on the compass—
“I thought so, sir,” he exclaimed. “There’s a shift of wind. It has backed round again into the eastward.”
Such was providentially the case. I took the bearings of the land. We might now hope to drive on clear of it. The sea was, however, getting higher and higher, but the Dolphin proved to be as tight as a cork and as buoyant, and I began to get rid of all my dread of her foundering, provided her masts and rigging did not give way.
Considering the manner in which she was fitted out, however, I did not feel quite easy on that score. Still nothing more could be done, so we had, as best we could, to wait events. At length there was a lull. I expected that it would breeze up again.