“Mr Jennings, I hope you will forgive me for capsizing you in the gale when we were coming out from England.”
“Of course, youngster,” he answered gravely; “I have not thought about it since.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Tom, as if his mind had been relieved of a burden.
“I hope old Scrofton won’t be thinking about the tricks we have played him.”
“I was just after thinking that I wish he may not ill-treat Spider,” cried Desmond; “I don’t know what the poor baste will do without us.”
“What we have to do is to forgive all others from the bottom of our hearts,” remarked Archy. “We need not trouble ourselves what they will think or say of us.”
Archy, who was a true Christian, made several other fitting remarks, clearly pointing out to his companions the only way by which they could be prepared for the new existence into which there seemed every probability they would soon have to enter.
“It’s a grievous thought, my friends, that we do not all so live that we may be fit at any moment to die,” he observed calmly.
Few of those present failed to agree with him, and for the time, at all events, to wish that they were as well prepared as he appeared to be.
Again they were all silent for some minutes.