“Yes, Jimmy,” said the skipper.  “It’s my belief, in a way o’ speakin’, that if that theer mizen-boom catched you and knocked your head off, that theer wunnerful young gent ’ud come, and he’d have his laugh, and he’d up and he’d mend you, same as if you’d never come adrift, not one little bit.  What a thing is larnin’, to be sewer.  Yes, sir, he’d mend you.  Nobody knows what he can dew, and nobody knows what he can’t dew.  If we puts to this night—­and I don’t know why not, for we’re sailin’—­if we gets a turbot I’ll pay for it, and he’ll have that theer fish if I swims for it.”

“You’ve always got a good way o’ puttin’ things, skipper, and I says I holds ‘long o’ you.”

The patient slumbered blissfully in the dreary cabin, which could only be likened to a bewitched laundry in which things were always being washed and never cleaned; the men awaited the Admiral’s signal; the snow thickened into ponderous falling masses;—­and the professor jumped on deck, to be met with a loud boom of gratification by Tom, who had begun to dread the snow.

I like to think of that young gentleman faring over the treacherous lulls of sad water amid the sinister eddies of the snowstorm.  I wonder if any other country could produce a gently-nurtured young scholar who would make a similar journey.  It seems doubtful, and more than doubtful.

Tom had been reading to the paralyzed fisherman, and, although his ordinary tones had too much of the minute-gun about them to suit small apartments, he could lower his voice to a quiet deep bass which was anything but unpleasant, and he had completely charmed the poor helpless one by reading—­or rather intoning—­“Evangeline.”  Seafaring folk will have sentiment in their literature and music; humour must be of the most obvious sort to suit them—­in fact they usually care only for the horseplay of literature—­but pathos of any sort they accept at once, and Tom had tears of pride in his eyes when he told Lewis how the man had understood the first part of the poem, and how he had talked for a good half-hour about the eviction of the Acadians, and its resemblance to the fate of various fishermen’s wives who had got behind with their rents.  The evening closed in a troublous horror of great darkness, and the anxious night began.  Ferrier always made up his mind to stay below at night, and he amused himself either by snatching a chat with the skipper, or by reading one or two good novels which he had brought.  But imagine the desolation, the sombre surroundings, the risks to be run every hour—­every second—­and you will understand that those two English gentlemen had something in them passing self-interest, passing all that the world has to offer.  Ferrier never dreamed of becoming a nautical recluse; he was too full of the joy of life for that:  but he had a purpose, and he went right at his mark like a bullet from a rifle.  Once that evening he went on deck and tried to peer