oft and waiting for him to speak, and
says he, 'This is not at all what I expected, but the Lord will
provide;' and with that he pulled out a Bible from his pocket and
tapped it, looking at me very knowing, and so walked aft and shut
himself up in his cabin. Not another glimpse did we get of him for
thirty-six hours, and no message on earth could fetch him up or
persuade him to let us take a stitch off her. As for old Hewitt,
that has been mate of her these fifteen years, and forgotten all he
ever knew, except to do what he's told, not a rag would he shift on
his own responsibility. There she was, with a new foretop-sail never
stretched before, and almost all her canvas less than two years old,
playing the mischief with it all, let alone putting the ship in
danger. At last, when she was fairly smothering herself and her
topmasts bending like whips, up he pops, Bible in hand, and says he,
with a look aloft and around, like a man more hurt than angry,
'Heavenly Father, this won't do! This here's a pretty state of
things, Heavenly Father!' When the boys had eased her down a bit--at
the risk of their lives it was--and the old man had disappeared below
again, Mrs. Purchase came crawling aft to me in the wheelhouse, wet
as a drowned rat; and there we had a talk--very confidential, though
'twas mostly carried on by shouting. The upshot was, she couldn't
trust the old man's head. In his best days he'd have threaded the
_Virtuous Lady_ through a needle, and was capable yet; but with this
craze upon him he was just as capable of casting the ship away for
the fun of it. As for Hewitt, we found out his quality in the fogs
of the Banks, when the skipper struck work again and let the
dead-reckoning go to glory, telling us to consider the lilies.
Hewitt took it over, and in two days had worked us south of our
course by eighty odd miles. By the Lord's mercy, on the third day we
could take our bearings, and so hauled up and fetch the Gulf; and
here we are right and tight, and Mrs. Purchase gone ashore to ship a
navigating officer for the passage home. But mates' certificates
don't run cheap in these parts, as they do on Tower Hill, and the
pilots tell me she'll be lucky if she gets what she wants for love or
money.

"Dear mother, remember me to all the folk