boat, he took the child in his arms and sent his men back for sheets and
shot and palm and needle and prayer-book. "They shall have Christian
burial," declared the kind-hearted captain.

They went away and left him alone with the dead and the baby. The infant
seemed to cling to him from that moment, and the Great Father above
alone knows how strangely and rapidly those cords of love were cemented
between the bluff, old bachelor sea-captain and the infant. That heart,
which he had thought dead to all love since the awful day on board the
English merchantman, when he saw the only being he ever loved dying, was
suddenly thrilled by the tenderest emotions. Those sweet blue eyes were
upturned to his face with a glance of imploring trust, and the
captain cried:

"Yes, blow my eyes, if I don't stand by you, little one, as long as
there is a stitch of canvas left!"

The time was very short until his men returned. Wrapping the dead in one
shroud and winding sheet, with heavy shot well secured at their feet,
the captain put the little child's lips to its mother's, giving her an
unconscious kiss, which caused the men to brush their rough sleeves
across their weather-beaten eyes. Then, reading with a broken voice, the
last service for the dead, the shroud was closed, and the opening waters
received them and bore them away to their last resting place.

Jumping into his boat, with the little stranger nestling in his arms,
Captain Lane was soon aboard the _Ocean Star_, and with a fair wind and
sunny skies was once more homeward bound. The captain seemed loath to
relinquish his little charge. There was a goat on the vessel which
furnished milk, and the cook prepared some dainty food for the