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As I spoke, I knew, and knew not how I knew, that the thing which I had said was true With that knowledge ca that it swept aside like straw the torment of those cords, and the deeper hurt that I lay at his feet I suppose low aboutits beauty into so He looked a devil baffled For a id, with hands clenched "Embrace her heart, if thou canst," he said, in a voice so low that it caht have left "I shall press ainst her bosom"
Another minute of a silence that I disdained to break; then he turned and went up the ladder The seamen and the master followed The hatch was clapped to and fastened, and ere left to the darkness and the heavy air, and to a gri those hours of thirst and torment I came indeed to know the man who sat beside me His hands were so fastened that he could not loosen the cords, and there was no water for hiher alms,--the tenderness of a brother, the manly sympathy of a soldier, the balm of the priest of God I lay in silence, and he spoke not often; but when he did so, there was that in the tone of his voice--Another cycle of pain, and I awoke frouish, to hear hi beside me He ceased to speak, and in the darkness I heard hireatiron, and a low "Thank Thee, Lord!" Another moment, and I felt his hands busy at the knotted cords "I will have the, Ralph," he said, "thanks to Hiht my hands to war, and my arms to break in two a bow of steel" As he spoke, the cords loosened beneath his fingers
I raised reat ar from it, around me, and, like a mother with a babe, crooned me to sleep with the twenty-third psalm