But the necessity of managing the boat soon compelled its coxswain to raise his head, and to attend to his duty.  The wind sometimes came in puffs, and at such moments Jack saw that the large sail of the light-house boat required watching, a circumstance that induced him to shake off his melancholy, and give his mind more exclusively to the business before him.  As for Rose, she sympathised deeply with Jack Tier, for she knew his history, his origin, the story of his youth, and the well-grounded causes of his contrition and regrets.  From her, Jack had concealed nothing, the gentle commiseration of one like Rose being a balm to wounds that had bled for long and bitter years.  The great poet of our language, and the greatest that ever lived, perhaps, short of the inspired writers of the Old Testament, and old Homer and Dante, has well reminded us that the “little beetle,” in yielding its breath, can “feel a pang as great as when a giant dies.”  Thus is it, too, in morals.  Abasement, and misery, and poverty, and sin, may, and all do, contribute to lower the tone of our moral existence; but the principle that has been planted by nature, can be eradicated by nature only.  It exists as long as we exist; and if dormant for a time, under the pressure of circumstances, it merely lies, in the moral system, like the acorn, or the chestnut, in the ground, waiting its time and season to sprout, and bud, and blossom.  Should that time never arrive, it is not because the seed is not there, but because it is neglected.  Thus was it with the singular being of whose feelings we have just spoken.  The germ of goodness had been implanted early in him, and was nursed with tenderness and care, until, self-willed, and governed by passion; he had thrown off the connections of youth and childhood, to connect himself with Spike—­a connection that had left him what he was.  Before closing our legend, we shall have occasion to explain it.

“We have run our hour; Miss Rose,” resumed Jack, breaking a continued silence, during which the boat had passed through a long line of water; “we have run our hour, and ought to be near the rock we are in search of.  But the morning is so dark that I fear we shall have difficulty in finding it.  It will never do to run past it, and we must haul closer into the reef, and shorten sail, that we may be sartain to make no such mistake.”

Rose begged her companion to omit no precaution, as it would be dreadful to fail in their search, after incurring so much risk in their own persons.

“Harry may be sleeping on the sea-weed of which you spoke,” she added, “and the danger of passing him will be much increased in such a case.  What a gloomy and frightful spot is this, in which to abandon a human being!  I fear, Jack, that we have come faster than we have supposed, and may already have passed the rock.”

“I hope not, Miss Rose—­it seemed to me a good two leagues to the place where I saw him, and the boat is fast that will run two leagues in an hour.”