rospect of
it. The red disk sank under the sea, and darkness blotted out the ship.
By and by came a pleasant sound-oars moving in a boat's rowlocks. Nearer
it came, and nearer-within thirty steps, but nothing visible. Then a
deep voice: "Hol-lo!" The castaways could not answer; their swollen
tongues refused voice. The boat skirted round and round the raft,
started away--the agony of it!--returned, rested the oars, close at
hand, listening, no doubt. The deep voice again: "Hol-lo! Where are ye,
shipmates?" Captain Rounceville whispered to his men, saying: "Whisper
your best, boys! now--all at once!" So they sent out an eightfold
whisper in hoarse concert: "Here!", There was life in it if it
succeeded; death if it failed. After that supreme moment Captain
Rounceville was conscious of nothing until he came to himself on board
the saving ship. Said the Reverend, concluding:

"There was one little moment of time in which that raft could be visible
from that ship, and only one. If that one little fleeting moment had
passed unfruitful, those men's doom was sealed. As close as that does
God shave events foreordained from the beginning of the world. When
the sun reached the water's edge that day, the captain of that ship was
sitting on deck reading his prayer-book. The book fell; he stooped to
pick it up, and happened to glance at the sun. In that instant that
far-off raft appeared for a second against the red disk, its needlelike
oar and diminutive signal cut sharp and black against the bright
surface, and in the next instant was thrust away into the dusk again.
But that ship, that captain, and that pregnant instant had had their
work appointed for them in the dawn of time and could not fail of the
performance. The chronometer of God never errs!"

There was deep, thoughtful silence for some moments. Then the grave,
pale young man said:

"What is the chronometer of God?"

II.

At dinner, six o'clock, the same people assembled whom we had talked
with on deck and seen at luncheon and breakfast this second day out,
and at dinner the evening before. That is to say, three journeying
ship-masters, a Boston merchant, and a returning Bermudian who had been
absent from his Bermuda thirteen years; these sat on the starboard side.
On the port side sat the Reverend in the seat of honor; the pale young
man next to him; I next; next to me an aged Bermudian, returning to his
sunny islands after an absence of twenty-seven years. Of