“I am afraid that they are but bad doctors, Bob,” I answered, “however, take this cooling stuff it may perhaps do you good.”
“A river of it won’t cool the burning within me,” he gasped out. “Oh Harry, and if I die now, that burning will last for ever and ever. I would give all my wages, and ten times as much, for a few days of life. Harry, I once was taught to say my prayers, but I have not said them for long years, and curses, oaths, and foul language have come out of my lips instead. I want to have time to pray, and to recollect what I was taught as a boy.” I tried to cheer him up, as I called it, but alas, I too had forgotten to say my prayers, and had been living without God in the world, and though I did not curse and swear, my heart was capable of doing that and many other things that were bad, and so I could offer the poor fellow no real consolation. I persuaded him to drink the contents of the cup; but I saw as I put it to his lips that he could with difficulty get the liquid down his throat.
“You have had a hard life of it, Bob, and perhaps God will take that into consideration,” I said, making use of one of the false notions Satan suggests to the mind of seamen as well as to others. Bob knew it to be false.
“That won’t undo all the bad things I have been guilty of; it won’t unsay all the blasphemies and obscene words which have flowed from my lips,” he gasped out.
“Then try to pray as you used to do,” I said, “I will try and pray with you, but I am a bad hand at that I am afraid.”
“Oh, I can’t pray now, it’s too late! too late!” he exclaimed in a low despairing voice, as he sank back on his pillow, turning his fast glazing eye away from me. He had been delirious for some time before then, but his senses had lately been restored. He seemed instinctively to feel that I could offer him none of the consolation he needed.
While I was still standing by the side of his bunk, one of the mates came forward to see how the sick were getting on. He spoke a few words to try and comfort the dying man. They had no more effect than mine, he only groaned out, “It’s too late! too late! too late!” His voice rapidly grew weaker—there was a slight convulsive struggle; the mate lifted his hand, it fell down by his side.
“Poor Bob has gone,” he said, “there will be more following before long, I fear. If I was the captain I would get out of this river without waiting for a full cargo, or we shall not have hands enough left to take the vessel home.”
This scene made a deep impression on me; too late! too late! continued sounding in my ears. What if I were to be brought to utter the same expression? Where was poor Bob now? I tried not to think of the matter, but still those fearful words “too late” would come back to me; then I tried to persuade myself that I was young and strong, and as I had led a very different sort of life to most of the men, I was more likely than any one to escape the gripe of the fever.
We had another trip on shore to bury poor Bob. The captain seemed sorry for him. “He was a man of better education than his messmates, though, to be sure, he had been a wild chap,” he observed to me. Bob’s conscience had been awakened; that of the others remained hardened or fast asleep, and they died as they had lived, foul, unwashed, unfit to enter a pure and holy heaven.