“I suppose we shall; we usually do on Sunday and Wednesday. The reason services are not held to-day is because there is much work that cannot be delayed. The Lord helps those who help themselves, and instead of stopping to pray for deliverance we must first do everything in our power to lessen the danger.” The boy thought a moment, and then ran off to inform his mother. “Mama won’t believe it; she’ll think I’m fooling her!” he called out to his father. During the afternoon the boats were watered and provisioned, and made ready for launching, though Captain Stafford was determined not to abandon the ship until the last extremity. It is appalling to think of leaving a large vessel in mid-ocean for a few frail cockle-shells, and the master of the _Lochleven_ entertained a desperate hope that some sort of a breeze might soon spring up that would at least carry the doomed ship nearer the Galapagos Islands,—the only land within a radius of a thousand miles of the spot where the vessel lay. A few white wind clouds could be seen on the south-western horizon, but they rose very slowly. The fire was evidently gaining very rapidly, for when Mrs. Stafford went below towards evening she noticed a strong sulphurous smell pervading the cabin and sleeping rooms. The captain had not reckoned on this so soon, and took the precaution to bring his sextant, chronometers, the ship’s papers and some of the charts on deck, where all hands made arrangements to pass the night; the crew being in the extreme forward part of the long vessel, the officers amidships, and the captain’s family on the quarter-deck. This in itself was no especial hardship, for the weather was warm, though not excessively so. Magnificent beyond all description was the sunset. The sky reflected every possible tint—indigo, light blue, pink, magenta, light and dark green, yellow, orange, gray and other hues—all blended and shaded so harmoniously that it was impossible to tell where one began and another left off. In the midst of the indigo blue hung the moon, a crescent of burnished silver. As midnight approached, great banks of purple clouds massed themselves in the heavens, while forked and sheet lightning shot across the lurid sky. A dozen hands were aloft furling the skysails and royals. “Only a squall, Mary,” Captain Stafford said, in answer to his wife’s question, “but there is wind behind it, though perhaps not much.”