“I’m a man, Mr. Philipps, that’s always said my prayers regular all through life.  I’ve asked for things, big things, many of them, and I’ll not deny they’ve been mostly denied me.  I seemed to know they’d be denied.  But in the last week or so there’s been a change.  I’ve asked on, just as earnestly as I knew how, and I seemed to hear Him answer.  It was hardly a voice, and yet it was like a voice; it appeared to come out of millions of miles of distance; and I heard it say:  ’Captain, I do not forget the sparrows, and I have not forgotten you.  I have tried you long enough.  Presently you shall meet with your reward.’”

Dayton-Philipps stared.  Was the man going mad?

“And that’s what it is, sir, that makes me sure I shall bring this vessel into some port safely and pocket the salvage.”

“Look here, Skipper,” said Dayton-Philipps, “you are just fagged to death, and I’m the same.  We’ve been working till our hands are raw as butcher’s meat, and we’re clean tired out, and we must go below and get a bit of sleep.  If the ship swims, so much the better; if she sinks, we can’t help it; anyway, we’re both of us too beat to work any more.  I shall be ‘seeing things’ myself next.”

“Mr. Philipps,” said the little sailor gravely, “I know you don’t mean anything wrong, so I take no offence.  But I’m a man convinced; I’ve heard the message I told you with my own understanding; and it isn’t likely anything you can say will persuade me out of it.  I can see you are tired out, as you say, so go you below and get a spell of sleep.  But as for me, I’ve got another twenty hours’ wakefulness in me yet, if needs be.  This chance has mercifully been sent in my way, as I’ve said, but naturally it’s expected of me that I do my human utmost as well to see it through.”

“If you stay on at this heart-breaking work, so do I,” said Dayton-Philipps, and toiled gamely on at the pump.  There he was still when day broke, sawing up and down like an automaton.  But before the sun rose, utter weariness had done its work.  His bleeding fingers loosed themselves from the break, his knees failed beneath him, and he fell in an unconscious stupor of sleep on to the wet planking of the deck.  For half an hour more Kettle struggled on at the pump, doing double work; but even his flesh and blood had its breaking strain; and at last he could work no more.

He leaned dizzily up against the pump for a minute or so, and then with an effort he pulled his still unconscious companion away and laid him on the dry floor of a deck-house.  There was a pannikin of cold stewed tea slung from a hook in there, and half a sea biscuit on one of the bunks.  He ate and drank greedily, and then went out again along the streaming decks to work, so far as his single pair of hands could accomplish such a thing, at getting the huge derelict once more in sailing trim.

The shovels meanwhile had been doing their work, and although the list was not entirely gone, the vessel at times (when a sea buttressed her up) floated almost upright.  The gale was still blowing, but it had veered to the southward, and on the afternoon of that day Kettle called all hands on deck and got her under way again, and found to his joy that the coal-trimmer had some elementary notion of taking a wheel.