In a flash we were after him,—­he was our officer, you see, and we felt ashamed,—­me at the head, and the lads following after.

I got to the futtock shrouds, and there I stopped, for I saw him myself,—­a palish boy, with a jerk of thin hair on his forehead; I’d have known him anywhere in this world or t’other.  I saw him just as distinct as I see you, Tom Brown, sitting on that yard quite steady with the royal flapping like to flap him off.

I reckon I’ve had as much experience fore and aft, in the course of fifteen years aboard, as any man that ever tied a reef-point in a nor’easter; but I never saw a sight like that, not before nor since.

I won’t say that I didn’t wish myself well on deck; but I will say that I stuck to the shrouds, and looked on steady.

Whitmarsh, swearing that that royal should be furled, went on and went up.

It was after that I heard the voice.  It came straight from the figure of the boy upon the upper yard.

But this time it says, “Come up!  Come up!” And then, a little louder, “Come up!  Come up!  Come up!” So he goes up, and next I knew there was a cry,—­and next a splash,—­and then I saw the royal flapping from the empty yard, and the mate was gone, and the boy.

Job Whitmarsh was never seen again, alow or aloft, that night or ever after.

I was telling the tale to our parson this summer,—­he’s a fair-minded chap, the parson, in spite of a little natural leaning to strawberries, which I always take in very good part,—­and he turned it about in his mind some time.

“If it was the boy,” says he,—­“and I can’t say as I see any reason especial why it shouldn’t have been,—­I’ve been wondering what his spiritooal condition was.  A soul in hell,”—­the parson believes in hell, I take it, because he can’t help himself; but he has that solemn, tender way of preaching it as makes you feel he wouldn’t have so much as a chicken get there if he could help it,—­“a lost soul,” says the parson (I don’t know as I get the words exact),—­“a soul that has gone and been and got there of its own free will and choosing would be as like as not to haul another soul alongside if he could.  Then again, if the mate’s time had come, you see, and his chances were over, why, that’s the will of the Lord, and it’s hell for him whichever side of death he is, and nobody’s fault but hisn; and the boy might be in the good place, and do the errand all the same.  That’s just about it, Brown,” says he.  “A man goes his own gait, and, if he won’t go to heaven, he won’t, and the good God himself can’t help it.  He throws the shining gates all open wide, and he never shut them on any poor fellow as would have entered in, and he never, never will.”

Which I thought was sensible of the parson, and very prettily put.