It was the same with me as with a ship-broken man whom Providence comes
to relieve in his last extremity, and I could fix the place of mine as
certainly as if I had marked it on a chart. We had called at Gibraltar
(where O'Sullivan had received a letter from his mother, saying she was
splendid) and were running along the coast of Portugal.
It was a dirty black night, with intervals of rain, I remember. While my
shipmates were making cheerful times of it in the smoke-room (O'Sullivan
with heart at ease singing the "Minsthrel Boy" to a chorus of noisy
cheers) I was walking up and down the deck with my little stock of
courage nearly gone, for turn which way I would it was dark, dark, dark,
when just as we picked up the lights of Finisterre something said to me,
as plainly as words could speak:
"What in the name of thunder are you thinking about? Do you mean to say
that you were turned back in the 88th latitude, and have been hurried
home without the loss of a moment, only to find everything over at the
end of your journey? No, no, no! Your poor, dear, heroic little woman is
alive! She may be in danger, and beset by all the powers of the devil,
but that's just why you have been brought home to save her, and you
_will_ save her, as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow morning.
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