They were very late.  The spectacle had advanced far into passages of the highest thrill, and Denver’s eyes were riveted upon a ship and some icebergs.  The party found its seats during several beautiful lime-light effects, and that remarkable fly-buzzing of violins which is pronounced so helpful in times of peril and sentiment.  The children of Captain Grant had been tracking their father all over the equator and other scenic spots, and now the north pole was about to impale them.  The Captain’s youngest child, perceiving a hummock rushing at them with a sudden motion, loudly shouted, “Sister, the ice is closing in!” and she replied, chastely, “Then let us pray.”  It was a superb tableau:  the ice split, and the sun rose and joggled at once to the zenith.  The act-drop fell, and male Denver, wrung to its religious deeps, went out to the rum-shop.

Of course Mr. McLean and his party did not do this.  The party had applauded exceedingly the defeat of the elements, and the leader, with Towhead, discussed the probable chances of the ship’s getting farther south in the next act.  Until lately Billy’s doubt of the cow-puncher had lingered; but during this intermission whatever had been holding out in him seemed won, and in his eyes, that he turned stealthily upon his unconscious, quiet neighbor, shone the beginnings of hero-worship.

“Don’t you think this is splendid?” said he.

“Splendid,” Lin replied, a trifle remotely.

“Don’t you like it when they all get balled up and get out that way?”

“Humming,” said Lin.

“Don’t you guess it’s just girls, though, that do that?”

“What, young fellow?”

“Why, all that prayer-saying an’ stuff.”

“I guess it must be.”

“She said to do it when the ice scared her, an’ of course a man had to do what she wanted him.”

“Sure.”

“Well, do you believe they’d ‘a’ done it if she hadn’t been on that boat, and clung around an’ cried an’ everything, an’ made her friends feel bad?”

“I hardly expect they would,” replied the honest Lin, and then, suddenly mindful of Billy, “except there wasn’t nothin’ else they could think of,” he added, wishing to speak favorably of the custom.

“Why, that chunk of ice weren’t so awful big anyhow.  I’d ‘a’ shoved her off with a pole.  Wouldn’t you?”

“Butted her like a ram,” exclaimed Mr. McLean.

“Well, I don’t say my prayers any more.  I told Mr. Perkins I wasn’t a-going to, an’ he—­I think he is a flubdub anyway.”

“I’ll bet he is!” said Lin, sympathetically.  He was scarcely a prudent guardian.

“I told him straight, an’ he looked at me an’ down he flops on his knees.  An’ he made ’em all flop, but I told him I didn’t care for them putting up any camp-meeting over me; an’ he says, ‘I’ll lick you,’ an’ I says, ‘Dare you to!’ I told him mother kep’ a-licking me for nothing, an’ I’d not pray for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else.  Do you pray much?”