t the still
kneeling women.

"Cheer up, sir. God will protect ye and your gude wife, and us all. You,
his meenister, have made supplication to Him, and He has heard. Dinna
weep, ladies. We are in the care of One who holds the sea in the hollow
of His hand."

Then he followed the captain and the others on deck, Otway alone
remaining to assist the steward.

"For God's sake give me some brandy," said Lacy to him, in a low voice.

Otway looked at him in astonishment. Was the man a coward after all?

He brought the brandy, and with ill-disguised contempt placed it before
him without a word. Lacy looked up at him, and his face flushed.

"Oh, I'm not funking--not a d----d bit, I can assure you."

Otway at once poured out a nip of brandy for himself, and clinked his
glass against that of the clergyman.

"Pon my soul, I couldn't make it out, and I apologise. But a man's
nerves go all at once sometimes--can't help himself, you know. Mine did
once when I was in the nigger-catching business in the Solomon Islands.
Natives opened fire on us when our boats were aground in a creek, and
some of our men got hit. I wasn't a bit scared of a smack from a bullet,
but when I got a scratch on my hand from an arrow, I dropped in a blue
funk, and acted like a cur. Knew it was poisoned, felt sure I'd die of
lockjaw, and began to weep internally. Then the mate called me a rotten
young cur, shook me up, and put my Snider into my hand. But I shall
always feel funky at the sight even of a child's twopenny bow and arrow.
Now I must go."

The clergyman nodded and smiled, and then rising from his seat, he
tapped at the door of his wife's state-room. She opened it, and then
Otway, who was helping the steward, heard her sob hysterically.

"Oh, Will, Will, why did you? How could you? I love you, Will dear, I
love you, and if death comes to us in another hour, another minute, I
shall die happily with your arms round me. But, Will dear, there is a
God, I'm sure there _is_ a God.... I feel it in my heart, I feel it. And
now that death is so near to us----"

Lacy put his arms around her, and lifted her trembling figure upon his
knees.

"There, rest yourself, my pet."

"Rest! Rest?" she said brokenly, as Lacy drew her to him. "How can I
rest when I think of how I have sinned, and how I shall die! Will dear,
when I heard you reading that prayer--"

"I _had_ to do it, Nell."

"Will, dear Will.... Perhaps God may forgive us both.... But as I sa