“Ah, poor dear!  And she such a beauty, Mr. Brown; as any one might see by her lines, even that way off.  Ah, poor dear!”

“And so many brave souls on board; and, perhaps, some of them not ready, Mr. Beer,” says the serious elderly chief boatman.  “Eh, Captain Willis?”

“The Lord has had mercy on them, I don’t doubt.” answers the old man, in his quiet sweet voice.  “One can’t but hope that he would give them time for one prayer before all was over; and having been drowned myself, Mr. Brown, three times, and taken up for dead—­that is, once in Gibraltar Bay, and once when I was a total wreck in the old Seahorse, that was in the hurricane in the Indies; after that when I fell over quay-head here, fishing for bass,—­why, I know well how quick the prayer will run through a man’s heart, when he’s a-drowning, and the light of conscience, too, all one’s life in one minute, like—­”

“It arn’t the men I care for,” says Gentleman Jan; “they’re gone to heaven, like all brave sailors do as dies by wreck and battle:  but the poor dear ship, d’ye see, Captain Willis, she ha’n’t no heaven to go to, and that’s why I feel for her so.”

Both the old men shake their heads at Jan’s doctrine, and turn the subject off.

“You’d better go home, Captain, ’fear of the rheumatics.  It’s a rough night for your years; and you’ve no call, like me.”

“I would, but my maid there; and I can’t get her home; and I can’t leave her.”  And Willis points to the schoolmistress, who sits upon the flat slope of rock, a little apart from the rest, with her face resting on her hands, gazing intently out into the wild waste.

“Make her go; it’s her duty—­we all have our duties.  Why does her mother let her out at this time of night?  I keep my maids tighter than that, I warrant.”  And disciplinarian Mr. Brown makes a step towards her.

“Ah, Mr. Brown, don’t now!  She’s not one of us.  There’s no saying what’s going on there in her.  Maybe she’s praying; maybe she sees more than we do, over the sea there.”

“What do you mean?  There’s no living body in those breakers, be sure!”

“There’s more living things about on such a night than have bodies to them, or than any but such as she can see.  If any one ever talked with angels, that maid does; and I’ve heard her, too; I can say I have—­certain of it.  Those that like may call her an innocent:  but I wish I were such an innocent, Mr. Brown.  I’d be nearer heaven then, here on earth, than I fear sometimes I ever shall be, even after I’m dead and gone.”

“Well, she’s a good girl, mazed or not; but look at her now!  What’s she after?”

The girl had raised her head, and was pointing, with one arm stretched stiffly out toward the sea.

Old Willis went down to her, and touched her gently on the shoulder.

“Come home, my maid, then, you’ll take cold, indeed;” but she did not move or lower her arm.