the coming hour of danger.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STORM.

The place in which Blair and his companion found themselves was a small
strongly built closet, used as a "lock-up" for refractory sailors. A
single bull's-eye admitted a mere glimmer of light for a while, but that
soon died away in utter darkness as the night came rapidly on. It was
well for the boys that they knew something of ocean's rough rocking. A
land-lubber would have had all the miseries of sea-sickness added to the
horrors of that dreary dungeon.

A new exaltation of spirit had come over Blair. Difficulties and dangers
seemed as nothing to him while in the path of duty. He feared neither
the raging elements nor the power of angry enemies. He had the promise
that those who trust in God shall never be moved, and in this strong
refuge he was safe.

Not so with poor Hal. The dread of death had seized him, and absorbed
all other thoughts. He could not but think of the horrors into which he
should be plunged if he suddenly found a watery grave. Prayer seemed
impossible for him, as in a kind of agonized waiting he met every plunge
and reel of the storm-tossed ship.

Ah, the time of peril is not the best time to make one's peace with God.
When heart and flesh fail, the soul shrinks in dismay before its coming
doom. Even the wild prayers for deliverance which may burst from the
affrighted soul, what will they avail at the judgment? Are they the
cries of the contrite heart mourning for its sins against a holy,
loving, and beneficent heavenly Father? Are they not rather but as the
shrieks of the criminal who sees no escape from his merited retribution?
Alas for him who postpones his day of repentance till face to face with
the king of terrors. It is he only who is strong in his great Deliverer
who can see that icy beckoning hand, and amid the shrinking of human
nature find himself calm in the strength which only God supplies. If the
agonies or the stupor of the sick-bed unfit the soul to seek peace with
God in the dying hour, even so does the anguish of such fear as now
bowed poor Hal to the earth.

As the English lad crouched in his terror, Blair knelt at his side and
prayed earnestly for him to that God who seemed to the young Christian
but the more surely at hand, for the tokens of his power that made that
mighty ship quiver like a leaf in the autumn wind.

Worn out with the excess of his own strong emotion, Hal at length sank
into a deep slumber,