"That reefed foresail saved you," I threw in.

"Under God--it did," he exclaimed fervently. "It was by a special
mercy, I firmly believe, that it stood some of those hurricane
squalls."

"It was the setting of that sail which--" I began.

"God's own hand in it," he interrupted me. "Nothing less could
have done it. I don't mind telling you that I hardly dared give
the order. It seemed impossible that we could touch anything
without losing it, and then our last hope would have been gone."

The terror of that gale was on him yet. I let him go on for a bit,
then said, casually--as if returning to a minor subject:

"You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I
believe?"

He was. To the law. His obscure tenacity on that point had in it
something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it
were, mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should not be
suspected of "countenancing any doings of that sort." Seven-and-
thirty virtuous years at sea, of which over twenty of immaculate
command, and the last fifteen in the Sephora, seemed to have laid
him under some pitiless obligation.

"And you know," he went on, groping shamefacedly amongst his
feelings, "I did not engage that young fellow. His people had some
interest with my owners. I was in a way forced to take him on. He