Part 4 (2/2)
I will mention it presently.
I frequently spoke to Ellis in a way an officer cannot venture to do, except to a well-tried man. One day I asked him if he did not wish to write to his wife, as I had the opportunity of sending letters.
”I am not married, sir,” he answered, calmly. ”That young woman you saw, sir, Mary Summers, has promised to marry me when I get back, if I can prove to her that I have acted all the time I have been away like a Christian man. It's a long story too, and I won't trouble you with it now; only Mary has very strong notions, and very right notions too. I wasn't once what I now try to be. I was altogether careless about religion. I fell in love with Mary, and tried my best to appear good, and so far succeeded that I won her love. When, however, she found out what I really was she said that nothing would induce her to marry me unless I was a Christian. She gave me books and I read them, and I read the Bible as I had never read it before, and she talked to me till I thought that I was what she wanted me to be; but she said that people couldn't tell what they really were till they were out in the busy world and tried, and that I must be tried before she could venture to marry me. At first I thought her terms very hard; but I do a.s.sure you, sir, when I came to know more of the Gospel I felt that they were wise and just. It's a very different thing to appear all right and correct, and to feel very good too, in a quiet village, with a religious, sensible young woman to watch over one, than to keep straight aboard a man-of-war among a number of G.o.dless a.s.sociates. In one case a man may almost forget the necessity of earnest prayer. I do a.s.sure you sir, I have felt aboard here that I could not get on an hour without it.”
Reader, remember these words of Ellis. Consider how you will act when you are tried and tempted. Satan often lets people alone when he finds them in an easy position, that they may grow conceited of their own strength. Never cease praying that you may see his wiles, and that, through the Holy Spirit, you may be enabled to resist them, but never, never trust to your own strength, or you will be sure to fall.
Some two years after this, when Harry Lethbridge had grown into a fine young man, promising to be as smart an officer as any in the navy, we were on our pa.s.sage between the northern and southern portions of our station, when we were caught in as heavy a gale as I ever experienced--a complete hurricane. It came down on us so suddenly that it required all hands to shorten sail as smartly as they could do. Among those who sprang aloft when the hands were turned up was Harry Lethbridge, whose station was the foretop. The post of honour among seamen in reefing sails is the weather earing. [Note. An earing is a rope to haul up the outer part of a sail.] Thus when the fore-topsail was to be reefed, Harry eagerly sought, and was the first man out on, the yard-arm. While reefing the sail, on hauling out the earing, from the strength of the wind, and from his anxiety to get it done quickly, he did not haul the first turn sufficiently taut. After taking the second, and getting a good pull on it, the first earing rendered suddenly, and, losing his balance, he fell over the yard. Those who saw him as I did thought he was gone, but no; as he fell he had kept hold of the earing, and there he hung, suspended by it about nine feet below the yard-arm and full sixty from the deck, though, of course, far outside it, that is to say, over the boiling ocean.
Those on deck looked up, almost paralysed with the terrible spectacle.
His destruction seemed inevitable. His hands were giving way. He caught the rope in his teeth, and thus he hung suspended, alive and strong, with the joyous spirits and antic.i.p.ations of youthful manhood, and yet with death as it were gaping for him. The man nearest to him on the yard threw towards him the end of a rope, but it was blown away to leeward out of his reach. The captain instantly directed that a running bowline knot should be made round the earing, and thus lowered over his head; but his voice was drowned by the gale. Cries of horror escaped from the lips of all who saw him. ”A man overboard! a man overboard!”
was shouted out, for every one expected to see him fall into the sea.
William Ellis had never taken his eye off him. I saw him hurry forward.
Poor Harry could hold on no longer. His hands relaxed their gripe of the rope, his teeth gave way, he fell. As he did so, the s.h.i.+p lurched heavily to leeward and he came towards the forecastle. Ellis sprang forward, and as Harry's feet touched the deck, caught him in his arms.
The mids.h.i.+pman's life was preserved, and the only injury he received was the fracture of one of his ankle-bones. [Note. The whole of this account is fact, without the slightest alteration.] ”He's the only man who could have done it, though,” I afterwards heard some of the seamen remark. ”He prayed that he might do it, and he did it, do ye see.”
Even the irreligious often acknowledge the efficacy of the prayers of Christian men.
William Ellis persevered in his Christian course till the s.h.i.+p was paid off, when I saw his Mary, who had come to Portsmouth to welcome him.
They married; he obtained a warrant as a gunner, and some years afterwards, through the influence of Harry Lethbridge, got a good appointment on sh.o.r.e. The young mids.h.i.+pman, feeling that his life had, through G.o.d's mercy, been preserved that he might do Him service, became a thorough Christian, in practice as well as in name, and a first-rate officer; while Ellis continued as he had begun, aided and encouraged, I have no doubt, by his excellent wife, to the end of his life.
Note. This account was given to the author by the late Admiral Saumarez, and the words are to the best of his recollection those used by the man who performed the act recorded.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
THE TWO SAILOR-BOYS, A TRUE TALE
NED BURTON LOSES HIS MOTHER, AND IS LEFT PENNILESS--WALKS TO PORTSMOUTH, AND IS DISHEARTENED--IS CHEERED, DIRECTED, AND HELPED BY OLD MOLL--GETS ON BOARD THE TRAINING s.h.i.+P--AND MAKES A FRIEND--BUT IS REJECTED FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO READ--COMFORTED BY BILL HUDSON--BILL'S s.h.i.+PMATES HELP NED TO FIELD LANE--BILL TAKES HIM THERE--HE IS KINDLY RECEIVED--IS MADE A SAILOR OF AT LAST.
On a miserable pallet bedstead, in a small attic of one of the meanest houses in the lowest portion of a provincial town in the south of England, a woman lay dying. The curtainless window and window--panes, stuffed with straw, the scanty patchwork covering to the bed, the single rickety chair, the unswept floor, the damp, mildewed walls, the door falling from its hinges, told of pinching poverty. On the opposite corner to the bedstead there was a heap of straw, to serve as another bed, and against the wall a much-battered sea-chest and an open basket, containing even now a few rotting oranges, some damaged tapes, and such articles as are vended by small hawkers. Standing by the bed-side was a lad with an intelligent, not ill-favoured, countenance, though sickly, and expressive of deep grief, as he gazed on the face of one who had ever been a kind mother to him, and from whom he now knew full well that he was to be parted for ever.
”Ned, my boy, I have done my best to keep myself and thee from the workhouse,” said the woman, trying to lift herself up on her arm, that she might the better see the lad. ”It has been a hard struggle, but I have done it for thy father's sake. He was a sailor, and would never have thought to see me come to this pa.s.s. Thou must be one, too, Ned.
It's a rough life, but better far than starving on sh.o.r.e. I've done little for thee, lad, but feed thee, and try to teach thee to be honest, as thy father was. Be honest, Ned, whatever ye do, for thy poor mother's sake. But for thee, lad, I'd have left the weary world many a long year ago.”
”Oh, mother, mother, stay now--oh, do!” cried the lad. ”Won't the doctor help you--won't the parson?”
”No, lad; no doctor, no parson, can keep me here. But I'd like to see the parson. Maybe he'd tell me about the place I'm going to; for it's far off, I wot, and little I know of the road.”
”Oh, mother, I'll run and fetch him.”
Just as Ned was going, the dying woman sunk down, exhausted with talking. ”Don't leave me, boy,” she faintly murmured; ”it's too late now. May G.o.d hear a widow's prayer, and be merciful to you, and forgive me.”
Her voice sank--the last words were gasped out. Her son bent his head to hear her: he stood gazing at her face, expecting to hear her speak again. Gradually he became aware that he was alone in the world. His grief was too deep for tears. For hours he stood there, watching the face of the only being who had cared for him in the world; and then Ned Burton went out and did as she had before bade him, and, with the money she had h.o.a.rded up for the purpose, and that produced by the sale of the last few articles in the house, save his father's sea-chest, obtained for her an humble funeral, truly, but not that of a pauper. Then, leaving the chest with a neighbour till he should return and claim it, he went forth penniless into the world to seek his fortune.
Ned Burton's ambition was to be a sailor--not that he knew anything of the sea, except that his father had spent his life on it. His mother could not read or write, and, unable to instruct him or to pay for his instruction, being, indeed, too poor to do without the pittance his labours brought, she had allowed him to grow up in extreme ignorance-- though, according to the faint light that was in her, she had taught him, to the best of her power, to do right. Still, poor Ned knew nothing of religion. He had never been taught even to pray. Thus, helpless and forlorn, he went forth to battle with the world. A neighbour had told him that big s.h.i.+ps sailed from Portsmouth, so towards Portsmouth he bent his steps, inquiring his way as he went. A few of those who knew him, and had bought his mother's oranges and bobbins, gave him a few pence, and filled his wallet with crusts of bread, and sc.r.a.ps of cheese and bacon, so that he had not to beg for food.
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