But, in spite of all his encouraging words, Dick grew gradually weaker and weaker; until, towards midnight, his breathing became so very faint that Bob could hardly feel it, though kneeling down close beside him and with his face touching that of poor Dick. "I'm a-dying--Master Bob," he whispered, in such low accents that Bob had to bend down his ear close to his mouth to hear what he said. "I bees--a-dying--Mas-ter--Bob. I knows--I--be! I--hears--the--h'angels-- a-flapping on their wings! I knows they be a-coming--for--me! God-- bless--'ee, Mas-ter--Bob! Ah, if--'ee--ever--get--'shore--'gain--tell-- Cap'--I--didn't--mean--no--'arm!" Soon after faltering out these broken words, Dick fell back insensible in the bottom of the boat. "Oh, Dick, poor Dick, good Dick!" sobbed out Bob, throwing himself down beside him on the floor of the boat's little cabin and bursting into an agony of tears. "It is I who have killed you. But for me, you would never have been here at all! Poor, brave Dick, you saved my life, and in return I've killed you!" The torture of mind in which he now was on seeing, as he thought, Dick dead before him, coupled with all he had already gone through, but of which he had taken little heed while he had his comrade to console, now coming together affected Bob's mind. He began to wander in delirium, imagining himself not only safe ashore, but in his London home, amid all the surroundings to which he had been accustomed before coming to Southsea and to this sad extremity. He thought it was Sunday and that he was going to church with his mother and Nell; and that he was late, as usual, and they were calling him to hurry. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" he screamed out in such a shrill voice, attenuated by famine, as hardly to be recognised as human, so shrill that it startled the sea-gulls hovering over the boat. "I'm coming! There's lots of time, the bells are ringing still! The bells are ringing, I hear them!--Ring--ring--ring--I--hear--I hear--I--" Then he, too, lost consciousness and fell, like a log, insensible, across the body of poor Dick; the far-off bell which he had fancied to be ringing miles and miles distant from where the boat was floating in the Channel, being the last echo that sounded in his ears as he fainted away. But, there was reason in his madness. A bell was ringing; and ringing too realistically not to be real! CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. ON THE CASQUETTES. Bob's hearing was not at fault, this sense of his remaining perfect though his mind was wandering; and so, the unwonted sound that fell upon his ear had got woven amongst his delirious fancies. It was, without doubt, a real bell, which if it might not summon pious folk to prayer, yet fulfilled almost as sacred a duty, warning, as it did, poor mariners of impending peril and so answering the petition oft put up "for those travelling by sea."