“Bless him! bless him!” exclaimed the seaman, brushing away a tear from his eye. “But where is he now? Can you tell me nothing more about him?”
Just then Tommy came on deck. “What do you think of that little fellow out there?” I asked.
The seaman looked at him eagerly. In another moment he had sprung from one side of the ship to the other, and, to Tommy’s great surprise, had seized him in his arms, and gazing anxiously in his face, began to hug him as if he was about to squeeze all the breath out of his body. Tommy looked up at length in return.
“Father!” he exclaimed, hesitatingly, drawing deeply his breath; “is it you, is it you indeed?”
“Tommy, Tommy, it is,” cried the seaman. “I’ve found you, and you’ve found me; and if they were to tell me that you were not my own boy, I wouldn’t believe them, that I wouldn’t. I know you as well as if I’d never lost sight of you, that I do!”
I cannot describe how happy I felt at this meeting of the father and his boy. The tears came to my eyes as I watched them. I soon, however, went away and left them to themselves. “I trust I may be as fortunate in finding poor Alfred, after my long search for him, as Tommy has been in finding his father without looking for him at all,” was the tenor of my silent prayer.