till every savage has disappeared.

We return on board. It strikes me that we cannot appear very well
favoured in the sight of these poor savages. I say as much that day at
dinner to the captain. He is a man of few words.

"You are right, John; the next comers will suffer," he remarks.

"That matters nought to us," says Phineas Golding. "We shall not come
here again."

"Scant kindness to the next comers; as scant as that we have showed the
natives," I observe.

"We must all look out for ourselves in these seas," says the captain.
"It will be our own fault if we are at any time caught unawares.
Remember that, Master Harvey."

I make no answer, for the captain does not bear contradiction. The
first mate, Golding, and the doctor, keep always well with him. So do
I, for this reason: I heard him once say, "That John Harvey needs
keeping under." On that, I resolved, as far as it should lie in my
power, to keep myself under--to do my duty, and give him no occasion to
find fault. Thus far I have succeeded--but not always with ease; for
Simon Fuller has had uncontrolled power as a sea captain for many a long
year, often over rogues and vagabonds, whom fear alone will keep in
order, so he fancies. I have heard say that the rule of kindness will
work wonders. I have never seen it tried as I could desire, but I find
that the worst of our ship's company obey me more readily than they do
James Festing, and yet the first mate is an older, and, I truly believe,
a better seaman than I am. I speak quietly to the lads, eschew oaths,
and never handle a rope's end in wrath. He swears loudly, and uses
both.

I was called forward to see Tom Collis, the poor fellow who was wounded
in the boat. The surgeon can do nothing for him, he says, and I see
that the man's countenance is marked by death's hand. Around us, as I
sit by him, we hear laughter, and oaths, and gross talking. Collis is
suffering great agony. "Mercy! mercy!" he shrieks out. "To die thus--
no time for repentance, with hideous crimes weighing down my soul!"
Sometimes he raves, and says things which make my blood run cold; but I
talk quietly to him, and he grows calmer. I tell him in few words of
that simple plan God in His gracious mercy arranged before the world
began, by which sinners even great as he might be saved. He drinks in
every word. I tell him how the loving Jesus came on earth to live as a
man a life of suffering, that men might understand t