This did not sound so very bad; Hilary’s imagination for a moment suggested to her a variety of possible accidents, which might merely disable him for a time; and for a little while her previous alarm seemed unfounded. Then her memory again presented her companion’s manner, the fixed gravity, the mournful glance, the utter absence of all attempts at lessening her terror; he had never bid her hope, he had never said she was too uneasy; he named no serious cause for alarm, perhaps, but he felt it, and he meant her to feel it too. It was what he did _not_ say, rather than what he did, which aroused fear; and the cold, heavy weight of hopeless though undefined dread sank on her heart and threatened to crush it quite. But there was a Refuge to which she could flee, a Covert from the tempest which now beat upon her head, a Rock on which she might safely build her hopes. This thought it was that kept her calm; a feeling rather than a thought. It was the impulse of her soul, a part of her life, to trust and be still; she had trusted long; and confidence did not forsake her now. That was her strength indeed. “You were with him when he landed?” said she, presently, after sitting for some little space with hands clasped and head bent down. “I was! he bore it well; those things are easily managed by sailors.” He did not tell her, for he could not trust himself, the scene on board the _Erratic_, when he took his leave of the ship. He had been carried out on the quarter-deck on his couch, to say farewell to his men; there he had thanked them for their zealous services, their obedience, their orderly conduct, during the three years they had been together, and bade them all go on, though he was taken from them, to serve their Queen and their country as nobly as before. Then, calling up the crew of the second cutter, who had been with him on shore on that eventful night at Halifax, he thanked each for his undaunted bravery in the moment of danger which they had shared together; for their concern for his safety, and their ardor for his rescue, saying, that he believed it was to their promptness in assisting him that he owed what little life was left him, as, perhaps, but for their ready aid, he might have been buried under the ruins of the fire, and never seen his country again. And now he charged them all to live sober, steady, honorable lives, to strive to do their duty, and mind what the chaplain taught them, “And so farewell, my lads; God bless you all! and if we never meet again here, may we all reach the shores above, where there is no more sea.”