CHAPTER IV.

A near thing.

Ferrier was anything but a fatalist, yet he had a happy and useful way of taking short views of life.  In times of extreme depression he used to say to himself, “Things seem black just now, but I know when I get over the trouble I shall look over the black gap of misery and try to imagine what is on the other side.”  It is a good plan.  Many a suicide would have been averted if the self-slain beings had chosen to take a short view instead of harbouring visions of huge banked-up troubles.

No young fellow was ever in a much more awkward position than that of Ferrier.  The Haughty Belle smack, in spite of her highly fashionable name, was one of the ramshackle tubs which still contrive to escape the censure of the Board of Trade; and Bill Larmor, the skipper, skilful as he was, could not do himself justice in a craft that wallowed like a soaked log.  Then poor Withers, the maimed man, was a constant care; all the labour of two hands at the pumps was of little avail, and, last of all, the unhappy little boy could hardly count at all as a help.

But the bricklayer’s saying, “It’s dogged as does it,” holds all over the world, and brave men drive death and despair back to their fastnesses.  Ferrier thought, “I’m all well except for the active inhabitants of the cabin.  They seem to be colonizing my person and bringing me under cultivation; barring that I’m not so ill off.  If I can ease my patient, that is something to the good.”  So he claimed the boy’s assistance for the night, and determined to divide his time between soothing Withers and lending a hand on deck.  Skipper Larmor was composed, as men of his class generally are; you rarely hear them raise their voices, and they seldom show signs of being flurried.  As quietly as though he had been wishing his passenger good evening, he said—­

“We’re blowing away from them, sir, and we can’t du much.  I hope the yacht will be able to stand by us.  Later on we’ll show them a few flares, and if things get over and above bad I must send some rockets up.”

“I’m mainly anxious about my man below.  If we only had any kind of easy mattress for him I should not be so anxious, but he’s thrown about, and every bad jerk that comes wakes him out of his doze.  A healthy life-guardsman would be helpless after one night like this!”

“As I said, sir; Lord, help us; we must bear what’s sent.”

The Haughty Belle became more and more inert, and the breeze grew more and more powerful.  The Mediterranean is like a capricious woman; the North Sea is like a violent and capricious man.  The foredoomed smack was almost like a buoy in a tideway; the sea came over her, screaming as it met her resistance, like the back-draught among pebbles.  Ferrier found to his dismay that, even if he wanted to render any assistance, he was too much of a landsman to keep his feet in that inexorable cataract, and he saw, too, that the vessel was gradually rolling more and more to starboard.  The pumps were mastered, and even on deck the ugly squelch, squelch of the mass of water below could be heard.  Every swing of that liquid pendulum smote on our young man’s heart, and he learned, in a few short hours, the meaning of Death.