While they were thus engaged, and darkness was deepening on the scene, Welton stood on the quarterdeck observing a small sloop that floated slowly towards the lightship. Her sails were indeed set, but no breath of wind bulged them out; her onward progress was caused by the tide, which had by that time begun to set with a strong current to the northward. When within about a cable's length, the rattle of her chain told that the anchor had been let go. A few minutes later, a boat was seen to push off from the sloop and make for the lightship. Two men rowed it and a third steered. Owing to the force of the current they made the vessel with some difficulty.

"Heave us a rope," cried one of the men, as they brushed past.

"No visitors allowed aboard," replied Mr Welton sternly; catching up, nevertheless, a coil of rope.

"Hallo! father, surely you've become very unhospitable," exclaimed another voice from the boat.

"Why, Jim, is that you, my son?" cried the mate, as he flung the coil over the side.

The boatmen caught it, and next moment Jim stood on the deck--a tall strapping young seaman of twenty or thereabouts--a second edition of his father, but more active and lithe in his motions.

"Why you creep up to us, Jim, like a thief in the night. What brings you here, lad, at such an hour?" asked Mr Welton, senior, as he shook hands with his son.

"I've come to have a talk with 'ee, father. As to creeping like a thief, a man must creep with the tide when there's no wind, d'ye see, if he don't come to an anchor. 'Tis said that time and tide wait for no man; that bein' so, I have come to see you now that I've got the chance.

That's where it is. But I can't stay long, for old Jones will--"

"What!" interrupted the mate with a frown, as he led his son to the forepart of the vessel, in order to be out of earshot of the watch, "have 'ee really gone an' shipped with that scoundrel again, after all I've said to 'ee?"

"I have, father," answered the young man with a perplexed expression; "it is about that same that I've come to talk to 'ee, and to explain--"

"You have need to explain, Jim," said the mate sternly, "for it seems to me that you are deliberately taking up with bad company; and I see in you already one o' the usual consequences; you don't care much for your father's warnings."

"Don't say that, father," exclaimed the youth earnestly, "I am sure that if you knew--stay; I'll send back the boat, with orders to return for me in an hour or so."

Saying this he hurried to the gangway, dismissed the boat, and returned to the forepart of the vessel, where he found his father pacing the deck with an anxious and somewhat impatient air.

"Father," said Jim, as he walked up and down beside his sire, "I have made up my mind that it is my duty to remain, at least a little longer with Jones, because--"

"Your duty!" interrupted the mate in surprise. "James!" he added, earnestly, "you told me not long ago that you had taken to attending the prayer-meetings at the sailors' chapel when you could manage it, and I was glad to hear you say so, because I think that the man who feels his need of the help of the Almighty, and acts upon his feeling, is safe to escape the rocks and shoals of life--always supposin' that he sails by the right chart--the Bible; but tell me, does the missionary, or the Bible, teach that it is any one's duty to take up with a swearing, drinking scoundrel, who is going from bad to worse, and has got the name of being worthy of a berth in Newgate?"

"We cannot tell, father, whether all that's said of Morley Jones be true. We may have our suspicions, but we can't prove t'em; and there's no occasion to judge a man too soon."

"That may be so, Jim, but that is no reason why you should consort with a man who can do you no goods and, will certainly do 'ee much harm, when you've no call for to do so. Why do 'ee stick by him--that's what I want to know--when everybody says he'll be the ruin of you? And why do 'ee always put me off with vague answers when I git upon that subject?

You did not use to act like that, Jim. You were always fair an'

above-board in your young days. But what's the use of askin'? It's plain that bad company has done it, an' my only wonder is, how _you_ ever come to play the hypocrite to that extent, as to go to the prayer-meeting and make believe you've turned religious."

There was a little bitterness mingled with the tone of remonstrance in which this was said, which appeared to affect the young man powerfully, for his face crimsoned as he stopped and laid his hand on his father's shoulder.

"Whatever follies or sins I may have committed," he said, solemnly, "I have not acted a hypocrite's part in this matter. Did you ever yet find me out, father, tellin' you a lie?"

"Well, I can't say I ever did," answered the mate with a relenting smile, "'xcept that time when you skimmed all the cream off the milk and capsized the dish and said the cat done it, although you was s...o...b..red with it from your nose to your toes--but you was a _very_ small fellow at that time, you was, and hadn't got much ballast aboard nor begun to stow your conscience."

"Well, father," resumed Jim with a half-sad smile, "you may depend upon it I am not going to begin to deceive you now. My dear mother's last words to me on that dreary night when she died,--`Always stick to the _truth_, Jim, whatever it may cost you,'--have never been forgotten, and I pray G.o.d they never may be. Believe me when I tell you that I never join Morley in any of his sinful doings, especially his drinking bouts.

You know that I am a total abstainer--"

"No, you're not," cried Mr Welton, senior; "you don't abstain totally from bad company, Jim, and it's that I complain of."

"I never join him in his drinking bouts," repeated Jim, without noticing the interruption; "and as he never confides to me any of his business transactions, I have no reason to say that I believe them to be unfair.

As I said before, I may suspect, but suspicion is not knowledge; we have no right to condemn him on mere suspicion."

"True, my son; but you have a perfect right to steer clear of him on mere suspicion."

"No doubt," replied Jim, with some hesitation in his tone, "but there are circ.u.mstances--"

"There you go again with your `circ.u.mstances,'" exclaimed Welton senior with some asperity; "why don't you heave circ.u.mstances overboard, rig the pumps and make a clean breast of it? Surely it's better to do that than let the ship go to the bottom!"

"Because, father, the circ.u.mstances don't all belong to myself. Other people's affairs keep my tongue tied. I do a.s.sure you that if it concerned only myself, I would tell you everything; and, indeed, when the right time comes, I promise to tell you all--but in the meantime I-- I--"

"Jim," said Mr Welton, senior, stopping suddenly and confronting his stalwart son, "tell me honestly, now, isn't there a pretty girl mixed up in this business?"

Jim stood speechless, but a mantling flush, which the rays of the revolving light deepened on his sunburnt countenance, rendered speech unnecessary.

"I knew it," exclaimed the mate, resuming his walk and thrusting his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat, "it never was otherwise since Adam got married to Eve. Whatever mischief is going you're sure to find a woman underneath the _very_ bottom of it, no matter how deep you go!

If it wasn't that the girls are at the bottom of everything good as well as everything bad, I'd be glad to see the whole bilin of 'em made fast to all the sinkers of all the buoys along the British coast and sent to the bottom of the North Sea."

"I suspect that if that were done," said Jim, with a laugh, "you'd soon have all the boys on the British coast making earnest inquiries after their sinkers! But after all, father, although the girls are hard upon us sometimes, you must admit that we couldn't get on without 'em."

"True for ye, boy," observed Jerry MacGowl, who, coming up at that moment, overheard the conclusion of the sentence. "It's mesilf as superscribes to that same. Haven't the swate creeturs led me the life of a dog; turned me inside out like an owld stockin', trod me in the dust as if I was benaith contimpt an' riven me heart to mortial tatters, but I couldn't get on widout 'em nohow for all that. As the pote might say, av he only knowd how to putt it in proper verse:--

"`Och, woman dear, ye darlin', It's I would iver be Yer praises caterwaulin'

In swaitest melodee!'"

"Mind your own business, Jerry," said the mate, interrupting the flow of the poet's inspiration.

"Sure it's that same I'm doin', sir," replied the man, respectfully touching his cap as he advanced towards the gong that surrounded the windla.s.s and uncovered it. "Don't ye see the fog a-comin' down like the wolf on the fold, an' ain't it my dooty to play a little tshune for the benefit o' the public?"

Jerry hit the instrument as he spoke and drowned his own voice in its sonorous roar. He was driven from his post, however, by d.i.c.k Moy, one of the watch, who, having observed the approaching fog had gone forward to sound the gong, and displayed his dislike to interference by s.n.a.t.c.hing the drumstick out of Jerry's hand and hitting him a smart blow therewith on the top of his head.

As further conversation was under the circ.u.mstances impossible, John Welton and his son retired to the cabin, where the former detailed to the latter the visit of the strange gentleman with the keen grey eyes, and the conversation that had pa.s.sed between them regarding Morley Jones. Still the youth remained unmoved, maintaining that suspicion was not proof, although he admitted that things now looked rather worse than they had done before.

While the father and son were thus engaged, a low moaning wail and an unusual heave of the vessel caused them to hasten on deck, just as one of the watch put his head down the hatch and shouted, "A squall, sir, brewing up from the nor'-east."

CHAPTER THREE.

A DISTURBED NIGHT; A WRECK AND AN UNEXPECTED RESCUE.

The aspect of the night had completely changed. The fog had cleared away; heavy clouds rolled athwart the sky; a deeper darkness descended on the shipping at anchor in the Downs, and a gradually increasing swell caused the Gull to roll a little and tug uneasily at her cable.

Nevertheless the warning light at her mast-head retained its perpendicular position in consequence of a clever adaptation of mechanism on the principle of the universal joint.

With the rise of the swell came the first rush of the squall.

"If they don't send the boat at once, you'll have to spend the night with us, Jim," said the mate, looking anxiously in the direction of the sloop belonging to Morley Jones, the dark outlines of which could just be seen looming of a deeper black against the black sky.

"It's too late even now," returned Jim in an anxious tone; "the boat, like everything else about the sloop, is a rotten old thing, and would be stove against the side in this swell, slight though it be as yet.

But my chief trouble is, that the cables are not fit to hold her if it comes on to blow hard."

For some time the wind increased until it blew half a gale. At that point it continued steady, and as it gave no indication of increasing, John Welton and his son returned to the cabin, where the latter amused himself in glancing over some of the books in the small library with which the ship was furnished, while the sire busied himself in posting up the ship's log for the day.