About an hour and a half after dinner, when I was “rubbing-up” some “bright things” in the cook’s galley, Alister looked in, and finding me alone, said, “Would ye dare to come on deck?  We’re passing under bonny big rocks, with a lighthouse perched up on the height above our heads, for all the world like a big man keeping his outlook with glowering eyes.”

“I don’t think I dare,” said I.  “The cook told me not to stir till these were done.  Are we going slower?  That pumping noise is slower than it was, I’m sure.”

“We are so,” said Alister; “I’m wondering if—­” He ran out without finishing his sentence, but soon returned with a face rather more colourless than usual with repressed excitement.  “Jack!” he gasped, “they’re lowering a boat. The pilot’s going ashore.”

He remained with me now, sitting with his head on his hands.  Suddenly a shout of two or three voices from the water was answered by a hearty cheer from the deck.  By one impulse, Alister and I sprang to our feet and gripped each other by the hand; and I do not believe there were any two sailors on board who sped the parting pilot with more noise than we two made in the cook’s galley.

It was gloriously true.  They had kept us both.  But, though I have no doubt the captain would have got rid of us if we had proved feckless, I think our being allowed to remain was largely due to the fact that the vessel had left Liverpool short of her full complement of hands.  Trade was good at the time, and one man who had joined had afterwards deserted, and another youngster had been taken to hospital only the day before we sailed.  He had epileptic fits, and though the second mate (whose chief quality seemed to be an impartial distrust of everybody but himself, and a burning desire to trip up his fellow-creatures at their weak points and jump upon them accordingly) expressed in very strong language his wish that the captain had not sent the lad off, but had kept him for him (the second mate) to cure, the crew seemed all of opinion that there was no “shamming” about it, and that the epileptic sailor-boy would only have fallen from one of the yards in a fit, and given more trouble than his services were worth over picking him up.

The afternoon was far from being as fine as the morning had been.  Each time I turned my eyes that way it seemed to me that the grey sea was looking drearier and more restless, but I stuck steadily to some miscellaneous and very dirty work that I had been put to down below; and, as the ship rolled more and more under me, as I ran unsteadily about with buckets and the like, I began to wonder if this was the way storms came, gradually on, and whether, if the ship went down to-night “with all on board,” I should find courage to fit my fate.