the call. Had Clem been as other boys--.
But, being blind, he trusted to Myra, and Myra was a girl.

"Come aboard and have a drink of something cordial!" continued Mrs.
Purchase, holding the teapot aloft. She walked forward and looked down on
the workers. "Now you may sing, boys, if't pleases 'ee."

"Thank'ee, ma'am," answered up Billy Daddo; "then lev' us make a start
with Wrestling Jacob, Part Two--"

'Lame as I am, I take the prey'--

"'Tis a pleasant old tune and never comes amiss, but for choice o' seasons
give me the dew o' the mornin'."

He pitched the note in high falsetto, and after a couple of bars five or
six near comrades joined in together--

"Speak to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair:
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak;
Be conquer'd by my instant prayer!
Speak, or thou never hence shall move,
And tell me if thy name is Love."

Billy Daddo's gang hailed from a parish, three miles up the coast, noted
for containing "but one man that couldn't preach, and that was the
parson." Their fellow-labourers--the crew of the barque and half-a-score
longshoremen belonging to the port--heard without thought of deriding.
Though themselves unconverted--for life in a town, especially in a seaport
town, makes men curious and critical rather than intense, and life in a
ship ruled by Mrs. Purchase did not encourage visionaries--they were
accustomed to the fervours of the redeemed.

"'Tis Love! 'tis Love! thou diedst for me:
I hear thy whisper in my heart--!"

"Brayvo! 'tis workin'! 'tis workin'! Give it tongue, brother Langman!"
cried Billy, as a stevedore within the hold broke forth into a stentorian
bass that made the ship rumble--

"The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure universal Love thou art:
To me, to me thy bowels move,
Thy nature and thy name is Love!"

Meanwhile young Tom Trevarthen had brought the children under the vessel's
side, and was helping Clem up the ladder. Mrs. Purchase greeted them with
a kiss apiece, and carried them off to the cabin, where they found Mr.
Purchase eating bread and cream.

Skipper Purchase, a smart seaman in his day and a first-class navigator,
had for a year or two been gradually weakening in the head; a decline
which his wife noted, though she kept her anxiety to herself.
She foresaw with a pang the end of their voyaging, and watched him
narrowly, having made a