"Messmate," said he, in a voice that was now faint and broken, "you and I must sail together on this new voyage.

I'm going out of port first; but" (in a whisper of inconceivable tenderness and simple cunning) "I'll lie to outside the harbor till you come out, my boy." Then he paused a moment.

Then he added softly, "For I love you, Tom." These sweet words were the last of that rugged, silent sailor, who never threw a word away, and whose rough breast inclosed a friendship as of the ancient world, tender, true and everlasting: that sweetened his life and ennobled his death.

As he deserved mourners, so he had true ones.
His last words went home to the afflicted hearts that heard them, and the lady and gentleman, whose lives he had saved at cost of his own, wept aloud over their departed friend.

But his messmate's eye was dry.