Percivale says the captain of the lifeboat called out “Aboard!” The captain said he remembered nothing of the sort. If he did, he must have meant it for the men on the schooner to get on board the lifeboat. Percivale, however, who had a most chivalrous (ought I not to say Christian?) notion of obedience, fancying the captain meant them to board the schooner, sprang at her fore-shrouds. Thereupon the wave sweeping them along the schooner’s side, Joe sprang at the main-shrouds, and they dropped on the deck together. But although my reader is at ease about their fate, we who were in the affair were anything but easy at the time corresponding to this point of the narrative. It was a terrible night we passed through. When I returned, which was almost instantly, for I could do nothing by staring out in the direction of the schooner, I found that the crowd was nearly gone. One little group alone remained behind, the centre of which was a woman. Wynnie had disappeared. The woman who remained behind was Agnes Harper. The moon shone out clear as I approached the group; indeed, the clouds were breaking-up and drifting away off the heavens. The storm had raved out its business, and was departing into the past. “Agnes,” I said. “Yes, sir,” she answered, and looked up as if waiting for a command. There was no colour in her cheeks or in her lips--at least it seemed so in the moonlight--only in her eyes. But she was perfectly calm. She was leaning against the low wall, with her hands clasped, but hanging quietly down before her. “The storm is breaking-up, Agnes,” I said. “Yes, sir,” she answered in the same still tone. Then, after just a moment’s pause, she spoke out of her heart. “Joe’s at his duty, sir?” I have given the utterance a point of interrogation; whether she meant that point I am not quite sure. “Indubitably,” I returned. “I have such faith in Joe, that I should be sure of that in any case. At all events, he’s not taking care of his own life. And if one is to go wrong, I would ten thousand times rather err on that side. But I am sure Joe has been doing right, and nothing else.” “Then there’s nothing to be said, sir, is there?” she returned, with a sigh that sounded as of relief. I presume some of the surrounding condolers had been giving her Job’s comfort by blaming her husband. “Do you remember, Agnes, what the Lord said to his mother when she reproached him with having left her and his father?” “I can’t remember anything at this moment, sir,” was her touching answer. “Then I will tell you. He said, ‘Why did you look for me? Didn’t you know that I must be about something my Father had given me to do?’ Now, Joe was and is about his Father’s business, and you must not be anxious about him. There could be no better reason for not being anxious.”