A passing ship finding him in a part of the Pacific where ships were not wont to pass was perhaps among the least animating of all his hopes.
But the thoughts that coursed through the youth's brain that night were not centered alone upon the means or the prospects of deliverance.

He thought of his mother,--her gentleness, her goodness, her unaccountable partiality for Gascoyne; but, more than all, he thought of her love for himself.

He thought, too, of his former life,--his joys, his sorrows, and his sins.

As he remembered these last, his soul was startled, and he thought of his God and his Saviour as he had never thought before.
Despite his efforts to restrain them, tears, but not unmanly tears, _would_ flow down his cheeks as he sat that evening on his raft; meditated on the past, the present, and the future, and realized the terrible solemnity of his position,--without water or food--almost without hope--alone on the deep..