’For my best friend.  What have you not saved me from! and I can do nothing!’

‘Nay, sir.  Say but thae words again.’

‘Oh for a clergyman!  Or if I had a Bible to read you the promises.’

‘You shall have one,’ said the captain, who had returned to his side.  The surgeon muttered that the lad seemed as good as a parson; but Arthur heard him not, and was saying what prayers came to his mind in this stress, when, even as the captain returned, the last struggle came on.  Once more Tam looked up, saying, ‘Ye’ll be good to puir Fareek;’ and with a word more, ‘Oh, Christ:  will He save such as I?’ all was over.

‘Come away, you can do nothing more,’ said the doctor.  ’You want looking to yourself.’

For Arthur tottered as he tried to rise, and needed the captain’s kind hand as he gained his feet.  ‘Sir,’ he said, as the tears gushed to his eyes, ‘he does deserve all honour—­my only friend and deliverer.’

‘I see,’ said Captain Beresford, much moved; ’whatever he has been, he died a Christian.  He shall have Christian burial.  And this fellow?’ pointing to poor Fareek, whose grief was taking vent in moans and sobs.

‘Christian—­Abyssinian, but dumb,’ Arthur explained; and having his promise that all respect should be paid to poor Tam’s corpse, he let the doctor lead him away, for he had now time to feel how sun-scorched and exhausted he was, with giddy, aching head, and legs cramped and stiff, arms strained and shoulders painful after his three days and nights of the boat.  His thirst, too, seemed unquenchable, in spite of drinks almost unconsciously taken, and though hungry he had little will to eat.

The surgeon made him take a warm bath, and then fed him with soup, after which, on a promise of being called in due time, he consented to deposit himself in a hammock, and presently fell asleep.

When he awoke he found that clothes had been provided for him—­naval uniforms; but that could not be helped, and the comfort was great.  He was refreshed, but still very stiff.  However, he dressed and was just ready, when the surgeon came to see whether he were in condition to be summoned, for it was near sundown, and all hands were piped up to attend poor Tam’s funeral rites.  His generous and faithful deed had eclipsed the memory that he was a renegade, and, indeed, it had been in such ignorance that he had had little to deny.

All the sailors stood as respectfully as if he had been one of themselves while the captain read a portion of the Burial Office.  Such honours would never have been his in his native land, where at that time even Episcopalians themselves could not have ventured on any out-door rites; and Arthur was thus doubly struck and impressed, when, as the corpse, sewn in sail-cloth and heavily weighted, was launched into the blue waves, he heard the words committing the body to the deep, till the sea should give up her dead.  He longed to be able to translate them to poor Fareek, who was weeping and howling so inconsolably as to attest how good a master he had lost.