As for Bob he cleaned both fish, taking them on board the ship to do so.  He put the largest and coarsest into the coppers, after cutting it up, mixing with it onions, pork, and ship’s bread, intending to start a fire beneath it early in the morning, and cook a sort of chowder.  The other he fried, Mark and he making a most grateful meal on it, that evening.

Chapter VII.

   “Be thou at peace!—­Th’ all-seeing eye,
    Pervading earth, and air, and sky,
    The searching glance which none may flee,
    Is still, in mercy, turn’d on thee.”

    Mrs. Hemans.

The Sabbath ever dawns on the piously-inclined, with hope and a devout gratitude to the Creator for all his mercies.  This is more apt to be the case in genial seasons, and rural abodes, perhaps, than amidst the haunts of men, and when the thoughts are diverted from the proper channels by the presence of persons around us.  Still greater is the influence of absolute solitude, and that increased by the knowledge of a direct and visible dependence on the Providence of God, for the means of even prolonging existence.  In the world, men lose sight of this dependence, fancying themselves and their powers of more account than the truth would warrant, and even forgetting whence these very boasted powers are derived; but man, when alone, and in critical circumstances, is made to feel that he is not sufficient for his own wants, and turns with humility and hope to the divine hand that upholds him.

With feelings of this character, did Mark and Betts keep their first Sabbath on the reef.  The former read the morning service, from beginning to end, while the latter sat by, an attentive listener.  The only proof given of any difference in religious faith between our mariners, was of so singular a nature as to merit notice.  Notwithstanding Bob’s early familiarity with Mark, his greater age, and the sort of community of feeling and interest created by their common misfortune, the former had not ceased to treat the last with the respect due to his office.  This deference never deserted him, and he had riot once since the ship was embayed, entered the cabin without pulling off his hat As soon as church commenced, however, Bob resumed his tarpaulin, as a sort of sign of his own orthodoxy in the faith of his fathers; making it a point to do as they had done in meeting, and slightly concerned lest his companion might fall into the error of supposing he was a man likely to be converted.  Mark also observed that, in the course of that Sabbath, Bob used the pronouns ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’ on two or three occasions, sounding oddly enough in the mouth of the old salt.