He hoped the sea had not broken into the cabin and drowned all that were left to him on earth.  He had often been called to drink the cup of bitterness, had he been called to drink it to its dregs?  Had his sorrow at last reached its destined depths.  He burst into tears, almost stupified, and calling upon Him who is able to guide the storm in its course and hush it to a calm; to Him whose charities have distilled like the dews of Heaven; who had fed the hungry and clothed the naked; who had opened a way of escape in the wilderness; to Him he cried for succor.  And at last in utter despair he earnestly prayed for morning or death.  Now and again a huge sea would break over the little ship, but she rode the waves as beautifully as an ocean liner.  Terribly the night wore away.  With the dawn of the morning the gale began to abate.  The Captain lashed the tiller and crept to the companion way.  He opened it, went down, found his children, bruised, bleeding and terrified.  He kissed them, feeling they were now dearer than ever to him.  They asked him where their mother was.  He came on deck and shut them in the cabin without replying.  As Captain Godfrey crawled to his position at the helm, he said to himself, my dear children have escaped the arrow and tomahawk, the flames at Grimross, the thunder, lightning and tempest, and even yet they are safe.  If it were not for my children I would prefer to sleep here in death rather than live elsewhere.  I would be near my wife to share a part with her in the resurrection.

While the Captain was thus mournfully musing, a faint light began to creep around the eastern horizon.  He was so absorbed in thought and in watching every movement of the sloop that he did not notice the increasing light.  There were rifts in the dark clouds, and the air was growing moist.  The morning light brought with it rain.  The sea gradually grew less and less troubled, and the little vessel rolled and pitched more easily.  The Captain was suddenly startled from his reverie by the increasing rays of the rising sun, who was now beginning to show his golden circle above the horizon.  He made fast the tiller and went forward to see what damage had been done through the night.  The jib had been snugly furled before darkness set in.  As he stepped forward of the mainsail, to his great surprise he saw two human forms wedged in under the windlass and locked in each other’s arms.  They were tightly wedged to their knees, between the windlass and the deck.  Mrs. Godfrey’s clothes were torn in shreds.  She lay with her head across the Indian’s shoulders, her arms were tightly locked around his neck and flowing black hair.