primroses
and daisies--daisies, by heaven, in a world that was like a waste!

As for me I did my best to play the game of never giving up. It was a
middling hard game, God knows, and after weeks of waiting a sense of
helplessness settled down on me such as I had never known before.

I am not what is called a religious man, but when I thought of my
darling's danger (for such I was sure it was) and how I was cut off from
her by thousands of miles of impassable sea, there came an overwhelming
longing to go with my troubles to somebody stronger than myself.

I found it hard to do that at first, for a feeling of shame came over
me, and I thought:

"You coward, you forgot all about God when things were going well with
you, but now that they are tumbling down, and death seems certain, you
whine and want to go where you never dreamt of going in your days of
ease and strength."

I got over that, though--there's nothing except death a man doesn't get
over down there--and a dark night came when (the ice breaking from the
cliffs of the Cape with a sound that made me think of my last evening at
Castle Raa) I found myself folding my hands and praying to the God of my
childhood, not for myself but for my dear one, that He before whom the
strongest of humanity were nothing at all, would take her into His
Fatherly keeping.

"Help her! Help her! _I_ can do no more."

It was just when I was down to that extremity that it pleased Providence
to come to my relief. The very next morning I was awakened out of my
broken sleep by the sound of a gun, followed by such a yell from Treacle
as was enough to make you think the sea-serpent had got hold of his old
buttocks.

"The ship! The ship! Commander! Commander! The ship! The ship!"

And, looking out of my little window I saw him, with six or seven other
members of our company, half naked, just as they had leapt out of their
bunks, running like savages to the edge of the sea, where the "Scotia,"
with all flags flying (God bless and preserve her!), was steaming slowly
up through a grinding pack of broken ice.

What a day that was! What shouting! What hand-shaking! For O'Sullivan it
was Donnybrook Fair with the tail of his coat left out, and for Treacle
it was Whitechapel Road with "What cheer, old cock?" and an unquenchable
desire to stand treat all round.

But what I chiefly remember is that the moment I awoke, and before the
idea that we were saved and about to go home had been fully