In leaving the ship, the mother had been more thoughtful than many persons would have been, and had taken the box which contained her valuables and such papers as comprised her heavy bills of credit on England, in which way she was transporting the bulk of her husband’s late valuable estate to her native land.  At first she had taken especial pains not to have the fact known to the men that she had any great amount of valuables with her, lest it should prove a temptation to them, and lead to some tragical result as it regarded the safety of herself and child.  But she need not have feared, those hearty sons of the ocean were true as steel; and it was only the second day that having laid the casket down carelessly in the boat, she had retired to the little forecastle forgetting it, when it was brought to her again by one of them who remarked, that he presumed it was something of particular value by its appearance.

According to the mate’s reckoning, the time had already arrived when the land should heave in sight, and the three seamen were constantly on the lookout for it in the supposed direction where it should appear; but all their search for it proved in. vain, there was the same endless expanse of ocean before them day after day, bounded only by the dim horizon, and unrelieved by any object, while the same hope reigned in their hearts.  The exposure they endured, though not very severe, yet began to tell upon them all, and especially the mate and two seamen, and the cheeks of the seamen already looked sunken, their eyes less spirited.  This was the combined result of their feelings of disappointment with physical labor, for they worked several hours at the oars every day, aiding the sailing power of the boat, in the hopes of reaching the land before another gale or storm should occur.  Now, however, they began to discard the oars, and to feel less and less courage to labor in propelling the boat.

The widow who was not a little of a philosopher and a woman of good sound mind, determined to do something to amuse the men, and cheer them up in their emergency; she saw how sadly they needed some such influence, and telling her daughter of her purpose, when night again came on she induced her to sing some of her sweetest airs with all her power of execution, and to repeat them to the real joy and delight of these hardy men, who at once gathered an agency from this music, and declared it was the harbinger of good.  Whether it was so in the way they supposed or not, it certainly was a harbinger of good as it regarded its cheering effects upon them, and their hearts were again filled with hope, and their sinews bent once more to toil at the oars.

CHAPTER VII.

The sea witch.