"No question on 't; and this morning as he lay groaning in sore distress, and calling upon one and another to wait on him, and none had time or stomach for it, goodwife Rigdale came to the caboose for a morsel of meat after her night's watch, and hearing him she cried, 'Alack, poor soul!' and hasted to him with the very cup she was just putting to her own lips. The dog fastened to it, I promise you, and drank every drop, then gazing up at her asked a bit too late,-- "'Hast any left for thyself?' "She smiled on him with that white face she wears nowadays and said,-- "'Nay, but thou 'rt more than welcome.' Then says Master Boatswain, not knowing that I heard him,-- "'Oh, if I was set to get over this, as well do I know I am not, I would ask no better than to join your company and forswear all I have held dear. For now do I see how true Christians carry themselves to each other when they are in trouble, while we heathen let each other lie and die like dogs.' "So the poor wench, fit to drop as she was, knelt and began praying for him, and I stole away." "But do not those men care one for another in their sickness?" asked Brewster indignantly. "As yonder wolf tended upon the dying buck," replied Jones with a careless laugh. "To drink his blood while it was warm was his chief care, and my men part the gear of their dying messmates before their eyes. Why, one of the quartermasters, Williams, thou knowest, would fain have hired Bowman, the other quartermaster, to befriend him to the last, and promised him all his goods if he should die, and money if he got well; but the knave did but make him two messes of broth, and some kind of posset to drink o' nights, and then left him, swearing all over the ship that Williams was cozening him by living so long, and he would do no more for him though he starved, and yet the poor soul lay a-dying then." "And Bowman had his goods?" demanded Howland sternly. "Ay had he, or ever the breath was out of the body. Then there was Cooper, who died cursing and swearing at his wife, and her spendthrift ways, that wasted all his wage and still sent him to gather more. And there was the gunner whose whole thought was that he must quit his gear, and would have his chest stand where he could see it, and the key under his pillow to the last; and when one of your men asked would he listen to a bit of a prayer he bawled out with a curse, 'Nay, what profit was there in prayers, or who would pay him for hearkening.' "I tell you, masters, 't is the worst port ever I made, and albeit I'm not a man of dainty or queasy stomach, it turns me sick to see and hear such things, and know that I'm master of a crew bound for hell though we called it Virginia."