The gale was a short-lived one. On the following morning the wind had
decreased to a moderate breeze, and before night the sea had gone down
sufficiently to allow the boat of Mr Jones's sloop to come alongside of
the floating light.
Before Jim Welton bade his friends good-bye, he managed to have an
earnest and private talk with each of them. Although he had never been
connected with the Gull, he had frequently met with the men of that
vessel, and, being one of those large-hearted sympathetic men who
somehow worm themselves into the affection and confidence of most of
their friends and comrades, he had something particular to say to each,
either in reference to wives and families on shore, or to other members
of that distracting section of the human family which, according to Mr
Welton senior, lay at the foundation of all mischief.
But young Welton did not confine himself to temporal matters. It has
already been hinted that he had for some time been in the habit of
attending prayer-meetings, but the truth was that he had recently been
led by a sailor's missionary to read the Bible, and the precious Word of
God had been so blessed to his soul, that he had seen his own lost
condition by nature, and had also seen, and joyfully accepted, Jesus
Christ as his all-sufficient Saviour. He had come to "know the truth,"
and "the truth had set him free;" free, not only from spiritual death
and the power of sin, but free from that unmanly shame which, alas! too
often prevents Christians from taking a bold stand on the Lord's side.
The young sailor had, no doubt, had severe inward conflicts, which were
known only to God and himself, but he had been delivered and
strengthened, for he was not ashamed of Christ in the presence of his
old comrades, and he sought by all the means in his power to draw them
to the same blessed Saviour.
"Well, good-bye, Jim," said Mr Welton, senior, as his son moved towards
the gangway, when the boat came alongside, "all I've got to say to 'ee,
lad, is, that you're on dangerous ground, and you have no right to shove
yourself in the way of temptation."
"But I don't _shove_ myself, father; I think I am led in that way. I
may be wrong, perhaps, but such is my belief."
"You'll not forget that message to my mother," whispered a
sickly-looking seaman, whose strong-boned frame appeared to be somewhat
attenuated by disease.
"I'll not forget, Rainer. It's likely that we shall be in Yarmouth in a
couple of days, and you may depend upon my looking up the old woman as
soon after I get ashore as possible."
"Hallo! hi!" shouted a voice from below, "wot's all the hurry?" cried
Dick Moy, stumbling hastily up on deck while in the act of closing a
letter which bore evidence of having been completed under difficulties,
for its form was irregular, and its back was blotted. "Here you are,
putt that in the post at Yarmouth, will 'ee, like a good fellow?"
"Why, you've forgotten the address," exclaimed Jim Welton in affected
surprise.
"No, I 'aven't. There it is hall right on the back."
"What, that blot?"
"Ay, that's wot stands for Mrs Moy," said Dick, with a good-natured
smile.
"Sure now," observed Jerry MacGowl, looking earnestly at the letter, "it
do seem to me, for all the world, as if a cat had drawed his tail across
it after stumblin' over a ink-bottle."
"Don't Mrs Moy live in Ramsgate?" inquired Jim Welton.
"Of course she do," replied Dick.
"But I'm not going there; I'm goin' to Yarmouth," said Jim.
"Wot then?" retorted Dick, "d'ee suppose the clerk o' the post-office at
Yarmouth ain't as well able to read as the one at Ramsgate, even though
the writin' _do_ be done with a cat's tail? Go along with 'ee."
Thus dismissed, Jim descended the side and was quickly on board the
sloop Nora to which he belonged.
On the deck of the little craft he was received gruffly by a man of
powerful frame and stern aspect, but whose massive head, covered with
shaggy grey curling hair, seemed to indicate superior powers of
intellect. This was Morley Jones, the master and owner of the sloop.
"A pretty mess you've made of it; I might have been in Yarmouth by this
time," he said, testily.
"More likely at the bottom of the sea," answered Jim, quietly, as he
went aft and looked at the compass--more from habit than from any desire
to receive information from that instrument.
"Well, if I had been at the bottom o' the sea, what then? Who's to say
that I mayn't risk my life if I see fit? It's not worth much," he said,
gloomily.
"You seem to forget that in risking your own life you risk the lives of
those who sail along with you," replied Jim, with a bold yet
good-humoured look at the skipper.
"And what if I do risk their lives?--they ain't worth much, either,
_I'm_ sure?"
"Not to you, Morley, but worth a good deal to themselves, not to mention
their wives and families and friends. You know well enough that if I
had wished ever so much to return aboard last night your boat could not
have got alongside the Gull for the sea. Moreover, you also know that
if you had attempted to put to sea in such weather, this leaky tub, with
rotten sails and running gear, would have been a wreck on the Goodwin
sands before now, and you and I, with the two men and the boy, would
have been food for the gulls and fishes."
"Not at all," retorted Jones, "there's not much fear of our lives here.
The lifeboat crews are too active for that; and as to the sloop, why,
she's insured you know for her full value--for more than her value,
indeed."
Jones said this with a chuckle and a sly expression in his face, as he
glanced meaningly at his companion.
"I know nothing about your insurance or your cargo, and, what's more, I
don't want to know," said Jim, almost angrily. "You've been at
Square-Tom again," he added, suddenly laying his hand upon the shoulder
of his companion and looking earnestly into his eyes.
It was now Jones's turn to be angry, yet it was evident that he made an
effort to restrain his feelings, as he replied, "Well, what if I have?
It's one thing for you to advise me to become a teetotaller, and it's
quite another thing for me to agree to do it. I tell you again, as I've
often told you before, Jim Welton, that _I don't mean to do it_, and I'm
not going to submit to be warned and reasoned with by you, as if you was
my grandfather. I _know_ that drink is the curse of my life, and I know
that it will kill me, and that I am a fool for giving way to it, but it
is the only thing that makes me able to endure this life; and as for the
next, I don't care for it, and _I don't believe in it_."
"But your not believing in it does not make it less certain," replied
Jim, quietly, but without any approach to solemnity in his tone or look,
for he knew that his companion was not in a mood just then to stand such
treatment. "You remember the story of the ostrich that was run down?
Finding that it could not escape, it stuck its head in the sand and
thought that nobody saw it. You may shut your eyes, Morley, but facts
remain facts for all that."
"Shutting my eyes is just what I am _not_ doing," returned Jones,
flinging round and striding to the other side of the deck; then, turning
quickly, he strode back, and added, with an oath, "have I not told you
that I see myself, my position, and my prospects, as clearly as you do,
and that I intend to face them all, and take the consequences?"