The good Joseph always drew back with a timid air of maidenly modesty when Tom approached him, and I quite sympathize with this bashfulness.  It has never been my fortune to exchange courtesies with a large and healthy polar bear, so I cannot describe the operation, but I should imagine that Tom’s salute would aid one’s imagination.

This delightful rough diamond called on Miss Dearsley to choose the lee side, and then he addressed himself to a superb young fellow who was leaning against the wainscot, and easily following the pitching of the ship.  “Look here, Ferrier, you can’t find one bigot in this ship’s company, but we’ve all had a lot of experience, and we find that religion’s your only blasting-powder to break up the ugly old rocks that we used to steer among.  We find that we must have a clear passage; we fix our charge.  Whoof! there you are; good sailing-room; bee-yootiful—­oh! fahscinating.”

“I quite follow you, and I sympathize with you so far as I am concerned personally; but when Fullerton persuaded me to come out I only thought of the physical condition of your people, and that is why I asked for Mr. Blair’s yacht so that I might have a genuine, fair show.  You see, I fear I am wanting in imagination, and the sight of physical pain touches me so directly, that I never can spare a very great deal of sympathy for that obscure sort of pain that I cannot see; I’m hand and glove with you, of course, and I shall go through with the affair to the finish; but you must doctor the souls, and let me attend to the bodies for the present.”

The speaker was a powerful, broad fellow, with a kind of military carriage; his tall forehead was crossed by soft lines of tranquil thought, and he had the unmistakable look of the true student.  Lewis Ferrier came south to Cambridge after he had done well at Edinburgh.  He might have been Senior Wrangler had he chosen, but he read everything that he should not have read, and he was beaten slightly by a typical examinee of the orthodox school.  Still, every one knew that Ferrier was the finest mathematician of his year, and there was much muttering and whispering in academic corners when he decided at last to go in for medicine.  He said, “I want something practical,” and that was all the explanation he ever gave to account for his queer change.  He took a brilliant medical degree, and he decided to accept a professorship of Biology before attempting to practise.  His reasons for being out on the North Sea in an autumn gale will come out by degrees.

A gentle-looking man stepped up to Ferrier and laid a white hand on his arm.  “We shall never interfere with you in the least degree, my dear Ferrier.  We’ll take such help as you can give.  We need all we can get.  When you are fairly in the thick of our work you will perhaps understand that we have vital need of religion to keep us up at all.  You can’t tell what an appalling piece of work there is before us; but I give you my word that if religion were not a vital part of my being, if I did not believe that God is watching every action and leading us in our blind struggles, I should faint at my task; I should long for extinction, though only cowards seek it of their own accord.”