The story I told you about the Indian girl makes me think of a little
boy that we once had in our ship. He was a very good boy. The captain
liked him very much. He was not the captain's child. But the captain
used to say that he loved little George as much as if he was his child.
The reason the captain loved him, and the reason everybody loved him,
was because he was so kind and so good natured, and because he always
did just as he was told to do.
I must tell you how George first came to live with us in the ship. We
were once a great many hundred miles off, and the wind blew very
hard. It blew so hard that we could not sail where we wanted to go,
and by and by the ship went upon a bank of sand. There we had to stay
a good while. We could not get away. Nobody was drowned. We ought to
have been very thankful for that. I hope we were thankful. While we
were lying on the sand bank, the waves dashed against the ship so
hard, that we were afraid it would break in pieces. We did not know
what to do. Some of us thought we might as well jump into the water,
and try to swim to the shore. But the captain said that we should
certainly get drowned if we tried to do that.
You wonder why we did not get into our boat, and row to the shore. We
should have done so if we had not lost our boat. But we had no boat.
The waves had dashed against it, and tore it away from the place where
we kept it, so that we could not get it again.
But when we thought we must all be lost, we saw a boat coming toward
the ship. Some fishermen had seen us, and were so kind that they came
to us in their boat, so that we could get to the shore. Oh, how glad
we were when we saw them coming! But the waves were so high, that for
a good while we thought it would sink before it got to us. The men had
very hard work to row the boat. The wind blew very hard at one time,
and the little boat was blown back again almost to the shore. But they
tried again, and after a long time they got to the ship. Then some of
us got into the boat, and the men rowed us to the shore. After that,
the boat went back to the ship again, and got the rest of the men.
But I have not told the best of the story yet. When we all got into
the house, where it was warm, we told the fishermen that they were
very good to come and help us get away from the ship. We thanked them
very much. And then they told us that we must not thank them; and they
pointed to a little boy about as old as you are, I guess. "There,"
they said, "that little boy is the one to thank. We should not have
gone, if it had not been for him. We were afraid the waves would dash
over the boat, and that we should be drowned. We did not dare to go.
But this good boy said, 'Do go! oh, do go! The poor men in the ship
will get drowned, if you do not go. I will go if my father will let
me. I do not think father's boat will get lost. God will not let us
drown, if we go and try to save the men.'" Well, the boy said so much,
that the fishermen told him they would go, and they did go.
This little boy's name was George, and this is the one that I told you
we all liked so well. The captain was so pleased with him, that he
asked his father to let the little boy come and sail in his ship. His
father said he wished his boy to be a sailor, and the boy wanted to be
a sailor, too; and that if the captain would be kind to him, little
George might go. So he went, and he was the very best boy I ever saw
in my life. He used to talk to the sailors; and when they did wrong,
when they said bad words, he would tell them it was naughty, and God
would not love them if they did so. The sailors did not get angry with
him, because they all saw that little George was good and kind, and
that he wanted to do them good. I know of a good many sailors who
stopped swearing, because little George told them, in his kind way,
that he could not bear to hear them swear, and that God would not love
them if they did so.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Rocks in the Sea.]