from so
terrible, though so righteous, an act.

Scarce had a quarter of an hour passed, when a fan of air from the west,
with a hint of frost and damp in it, crisped on our cheeks. In another
five minutes we had steerage from the filled sail, and Arnold Bentham was
at the steering sweep.

"Save what little strength you have," he had said. "Let me consume the
little strength left in me in order that it may increase your chance to
survive."

And so he steered to a freshening breeze, while Captain Nicholl and I lay
sprawled in the boat's bottom and in our weakness dreamed dreams and
glimpsed visions of the dear things of life far across the world from us.

It was an ever-freshening breeze of wind that soon began to puff and
gust. The cloud stuff flying across the sky foretold us of a gale. By
midday Arnold Bentham fainted at the steering, and, ere the boat could
broach in the tidy sea already running, Captain Nicholl and I were at the
steering sweep with all the four of our weak hands upon it. We came to
an agreement, and, just as Captain Nicholl had drawn the first lot by
virtue of his office, so now he took the first spell at steering.
Thereafter the three of us spelled one another every fifteen minutes. We
were very weak and we could not spell longer at a time.

By mid-afternoon a dangerous sea was running. We should have rounded the
boat to, had our situation not been so desperate, and let her drift bow-
on to a sea-anchor extemporized of our mast and sail. Had we broached in
those great, over-topping seas, the boat would have been rolled over and
over.

Time and again, that afternoon, Arnold Bentham, for our sakes, begged
that we come to a sea-anchor. He knew that we continued to run only in
the hope that the decree of the lots might not have to be carried out. He
was a noble man. So was Captain Nicholl noble, whose frosty eyes had
wizened to points of steel. And in such noble company how could I be
less noble? I thanked God repeatedly, through that long afternoon of
peril, for the privilege of having known two such men. God and the right
dwelt in them and no matter what my poor fate might be, I could but feel
well recompensed by such companionship. Like them I did not want to die,
yet was unafraid to die. The quick, early doubt I had had of these two
men was long since dissipated. Hard the school, and hard the men, but
they were noble men, God's own men.

I saw it first. Arnold Bentham, his