I thought of that wife of his whose letter he had wept over, and his child, and scarcely knew whether it had not been better for him and them that he should have died than return to them a broken-down, puling imbecile. I said as much to Mary, but the tender heart would not agree with me. "Whilst there is life there is hope," she answered softly. "Should God permit us to reach home, I will see that the poor fellow is well cared for. It may be that when all these horrors have passed his mind will recover its strength. Our trials are _very_ hard. When I saw that Russian ship I thought my own brain would go." She pressed her hand to her forehead, and an expression of suffering, provoked by memory, came into her face. We despatched our meal, and I went on to the main-deck to sound the well. I found two feet of water in the hold, and I came back and gave the boatswain the soundings, who recommended that we should at once turn to and get the boat ready. I said to him, as he clambered into the boat for the purpose of overhauling her, that I fully believed that a special Providence was watching over us, and that we might confidently hope God would not abandon us now. "If the men had not chased us in this boat," I continued, "what chance should we have to save our lives? The other boat is useless, and we should never have been able to repair her in time to get away from the ship. Then look at the weather! I have predicted a dead calm to-night, and already the wind is gone." "Yes, everything's happened for the best," he replied. "I only wish poor Jim's life had been saved. It's a'most like leavin' of him to drown to go away without buryin' him; and yet I know there'd be no use in puttin' him overboard. There's been a deal o' precious human life wasted since we left the Channel; and who are the murderers? Wy, the owners. It's all come through their sendin' the ship to sea with rotten stores. A few dirty pounds 'ud ha' saved all this." We had never yet had the leisure to inspect the stores with which the mutineers had furnished the quarter-boat, and we now found, in spite of their having shifted a lot of the provisions out of her into the long-boat before starting in pursuit of us, that there was still an abundance left: four kegs of water, several tins of cuddy bread, preserved meat and fruits, sugar, flour, and other things, not to mention such items as boxes of lucifer-matches, fishing tackle, a burning-glass, a quantity of tools and nails; in a word, everything which men in the condition they had hoped to find themselves in might stand in need of to support life. Indeed, the foresight illustrated by the provisioning of this boat was truly remarkable, the only things they had omitted being a mast and sail, it having been their intention to keep this boat in tow of the other. I even found that they had furnished the boat with the oars belonging to the disabled quarter-boat in addition to those of her own.