"You'll be wanting to see the captain as soon as he wakes up, sir," said he. "I'm terrified to face him--but if ye'd juist slip in when he comes to himself, sir, I'm thinking, reverend sir, ye might wile him off yon terrible notion o' his." Westwood shook his head seriously, not knowing what to say. "Ay, ay, sir," continued Macleod, as he half closed the door, "no doubt a man ought to be upon better things; but it's hard for him, when he's got a wife and weans six thousand miles away, and wants them alongside in a couple of hours--uncommon hard, sir! She's a douce, careful body, too, Mistress Williamson, like the captain's self; and I heard her fleech sore with the captain before we sailed, for to bide quietly ashore this time, for good. Poor woman! if she didn't e'en go the length o' partin' in anger the last morning, wae's me! till the very moment when (he telt me himself, sir,) she out with her arms round his neck, crying like to choke! An' all to--but if the captain had a fault, 'twas the love o'--good forgive me, though, when it was but studying his faim'ly, Mr Thomas! If it was only an auld tarry deevil like me, now, with neither kith or kin!" "Except cousins, Mr Macleod," said the surgeon, as he wiped his lancet on his coat-tail--"plenty of them in the High--" But he caught Westwood's eye, and was ashamed to finish his cursed heartless joke, though the rough second mate was too full of his feeling to hear it: when Westwood said something about our all thinking too little of these things before-hand, but how the captain was plainly a man that had done his duty carefully, which no doubt would ease his mind. The mate looked up, and eyed him sideways for a moment: "Eh? what?" said he, bluntly; "it's not so little I mind o' what I used to hear at the kirk langsyne, as not to know that's not the right doctrine. D'ye think, sir, _that's_ what'll put him over, when he finds out this is not Greenwich Reach? There's the Methody minister with the glasses, though!" he broke out, when again a look of despair came over his broad hard-favoured countenance. "They're always upon works, too, I've heard!" said he, turning and murmuring to himself; "oh, if I could but hoist out a bit screed o' the truth, myself, to comfort the poor man with! Lord, how didn't I think of the Shorter Carritch--let's see how't went--'What is the chief end of'--no, it's 'What is faith in--faith in the only rule to direct us--no, no.--Baptism is a sacrament--where--whereby"--and he was still overhauling some old catechism in this fashion, twisting himself all the time as if he were twisting a stiff rope the wrong way, with a look of misery none of us could have had the heart to laugh at, when a middy's voice came squeaking down the dark after-hatchway. "Mr Macleod, sir, the chief officer wants you on deck." Westwood slipped quietly off, and the young surgeon was beginning to talk easily, to rid his mind of something, perhaps; till I asked if there wasn't any chance.