Abraham, in the voice of a man utterly broken down.

'Why, to show,' said I, 'lest we should be run into. Here we are stationary, you know, and who's to see us as we lie?'

'And a blooming good job if we _was_ run into!' returned Abraham. 'Blarst me if I couldn't chuck moyself overboard!'

'Nonsense!' cried I, alarmed by his tone rather than by his words. 'Let us get under shelter! Here, Jacob, give me the light! Now, Helga, crawl in first and show us the road. Abraham, in with you! Jacob, take this lantern, will you, and get one of those jars of spirits you took off the raft, and a mug and some cold water! Abraham will be the better for a dram, and so will you.'

The jar was procured, and each man took a hearty drink. I, too, found comfort in a dram, but I could not induce Helga to put the mug to her lips. The four of us crouched under the overhanging deck--there was no height, and, indeed, no breadth for an easier posture. We set the lantern in our midst--I had no more to say about showing the light--and in this dim irradiation we gazed at one another. Abraham's countenance looked of a ghostly white. Jacob, with mournful gestures, filled a pipe, and his melancholy visage resembled some grotesque face beheld in a dream as he opened the lantern and thrust his nose, with a large raindrop hanging at the end of it, close to the flame to light the tobacco.

'To think that I should have had a row with him only this marning!' growled Abraham, hugging his knees. 'What roight had I to go and sarce him about his rent? Will any man tell me,' said he, slowly looking round, 'that poor old Tommy's heart warn't in the roight place? Oi hope not, Oi hope not--Oi couldn't abear to hear it said. He was a man as had had to struggle hard for his bread, like others along of us, and disappointment and want and marriage had tarned his blood hacid. Oi've known him to pass three days without biting a crust. The wery bed on which he lay was took from him. Yet he bore up, and without th'help o' drink, and I says that to the pore chap's credit.'He paused.
'At bottom,' exclaimed Jacob, sucking hard at his inch of sooty clay, 'Tommy was a _man_. He once saved my loife. You remember, Abey, that job I had along with him when we was a-towing down on the quarter of a big light Spaniard?'
'I remember, I remember,' grunted Abraham.
'The boat sheered,' continued Jacob, addressing me, 'and got agin the steamer's screw, and the stroke of the blade cut the boat roight in halves. They chucked us a loife-buoy. Poor old Tommy got hold of it and heads for 

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