d
breathing. 'How of your soul?' he asked.

'Aye!' said Solomon, 'that's a cargo that we carry under our hatches,
though we can't see it, and had no hand in the stowing of it. I've been
overhauling the sailing orders here, and the ten articles of war, but I
can't find that I've gone so far out of my course that I may not hope to
come into the channel again.'

'Trust not in yourself, but in Christ,' said my father.

'He is the pilot, in course,' replied the old seaman. 'When I had a
pilot aboard o' my ship, however, it was my way always to keep my own
weather eye open, d'ye see, and so I'll do now. The pilot don't think
none the worse of ye for it. So I'll throw my own lead line, though I
hear as how there are no soundings in the ocean of God's mercy. Say,
friend, d'ye think this very body, this same hull o' mine, will rise
again?'

'So we are taught,' my father answered.

'I'd know it anywhere from the tattoo marks,' said Solomon. 'They was
done when I was with Sir Christopher in the West Indies, and I'd be
sorry to part with them. For myself, d'ye see, I've never borne ill-will
to any one, not even to the Dutch lubbers, though I fought three wars
wi' them, and they carried off one of my spars, and be hanged to them!
If I've let daylight into a few of them, d'ye see, it's all in good
part and by way of duty. I've drunk my share--enough to sweeten my
bilge-water--but there are few that have seen me cranky in the
upper rigging or refusing to answer to my helm. I never drew pay or
prize-money that my mate in distress was not welcome to the half of it.
As to the Polls, the less said the better. I've been a true consort
to my Phoebe since she agreed to look to me for signals. Those are my
papers, all clear and aboveboard. If I'm summoned aft this very night by
the great Lord High Admiral of all, I ain't afeared that He'll clap me
into the bilboes, for though I'm only a poor sailor man, I've got His
promise in this here book, and I'm not afraid of His going back from
it.'

My father sat with the old man for some hours and did all that he could
to comfort and assist him, for it was clear that he was sinking rapidly.
When he at last left him, with his faithful wife beside him, he grasped
the brown but wasted hand which lay above the clothes.

'I'll see you again soon,' he said.

'Yes. In the latitude of heaven,' replied the dying seaman. His
foreboding was right, for in the early hours of the morning his wife,
bendin