Temple said briskly, ‘Thank you, captain.’

‘You may wait awhile with that, my lad,’ he answered; and, to our astonishment, recommended us to go and clean our faces and prepare to drink some tea at his table.

’Thank you very much, captain, we’ll do that when we ‘re on shore,’ said we.

‘You’ll have black figure-heads and empty gizzards, then, by that time,’ he remarked.  We beheld him turning over the leaves of a Bible.

Now, this sight of the Bible gave me a sense of personal security, and a notion of hypocrisy in his conduct as well; and perceiving that we had conjectured falsely as to his meaning to cast us on shore per ship, his barque Priscilla, I burst out in great heat, ’What! we are prisoners?  You dare to detain us?’

Temple chimed in, in a similar strain.  Fairly enraged, we flung at him without anything of what I thought eloquence.

The captain ruminated up and down the columns of his Bible.

I was stung to feel that we were like two small terriers baiting a huge mild bull.  At last he said, ‘The story of the Prodigal Son.’

‘Oh!’ groaned Temple, at the mention of this worn-out old fellow, who has gone in harness to tracts ever since he ate the fatted calf.

But the captain never heeded his interruption.

’Young gentlemen, I’ve finished it while you ’ve been barking at me.  If I ’d had him early in life on board my vessel, I hope I’m not presumptuous in saying—­the Lord forgive me if I be so!—­I’d have stopped his downward career—­ay, so!—­with a trip in the right direction.  The Lord, young gentlemen, has not thrown you into my hands for no purpose whatsoever.  Thank him on your knees to-night, and thank Joseph Double, my mate, when you rise, for he was the instrument of saving you from bad company.  If this was a vessel where you ’d hear an oath or smell the smell of liquor, I ’d have let you run when there was terra firma within stone’s throw.  I came on board, I found you both asleep, with those marks of dissipation round your eyes, and I swore—­in the Lord’s name, mind you—­I’d help pluck you out of the pit while you had none but one leg in.  It’s said!  It’s no use barking.  I am not to be roused.  The devil in me is chained by the waist, and a twenty-pound weight on his tongue.  With your assistance I’ll do the same for the devil in you.  Since you’ve had plenty of sleep, I ’ll trouble you to commit to memory the whole story of the Prodigal Son ’twixt now and morrow’s sunrise.  We ’ll have our commentary on it after labour done.  Labour you will in my vessel, for your soul’s health.  And let me advise you not to talk; in your situation talking’s temptation to lying.  You’ll do me the obligation to feed at my table.  And when I hand you back to your parents, why, they’ll thank me, if you won’t.  But it’s not thanks I look for:  it’s my bounden Christian duty I look to.  I reckon a couple o’ stray lambs equal to one lost sheep.’