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Harry Lethbridge, a young midshipman, was among the first attacked. Ellis carefully watched over the boy. Whenever he had performed his other duties, he returned to the side of the hammock in which Harry lay, bathed his face, sponged out his mouth, and gave him cooling drinks, like the most gentle of nurses. More than once the doctor told me, however, that he was afraid the young midshipman would slip through his fingers, and he afterwards said that he considered it was mostly owing to the very great attention paid to him by Ellis that he had escaped. Ellis did more; he spoke to Harry, when his strength was returning, in a way to touch his heart,–he told him how he had been saved from the jaws of death by a God who loved his soul, and he showed how alone that soul could be saved, and how freely and fully it would be saved, if he would but accept the redemption offered him.

Notwithstanding the way Ellis had behaved during the fever, John Jones, and men of his stamp, of whom there were many, continued to sneer at him on account of his religion. “Any old woman, or young girl, could have done as well as he did,–nursing a few sick men and boys: what was that!” they said. “It didn’t make him a bit more of a man.”

From the West Indies we were sent to North America, to do away with the effects of the fever. Knowing what a quiet man Ellis was, I was somewhat surprised when one day, on the passage to Halifax, John Jones came up to me on deck, fuming with rage, and preferred a formal charge against him, for having assaulted and thrashed him. I, of course, as in duty bound, sent for Ellis, and witnesses on both sides, to examine into the case. Ellis appeared, hat in hand, and at once acknowledged that he had thrashed Jones, but offered as an excuse that Jones and other men had systematically annoyed him whenever he sat down to read the Bible, and that at last Jones, encouraged by his previous forbearance, had snatched up the book and made off with it, threatening to throw it overboard. “I could bear it no longer, sir,” said Ellis; “so I knocked him over, that I might get back my Bible, and read it afterwards in peace. Besides, sir, he said that people who read the Bible are never worth anything, only just fit to nurse sick people, and that come a gale of wind, or any danger, they would always be found skulking below.”

“In that respect you, Jones, are wrong, and you had no business to snatch away Ellis’s Bible; but you, Ellis, broke through the rules of discipline by knocking Jones over. You must reserve your blows for the enemies of your country. I must therefore punish you. It is your first offence, but it is too serious a one to be overlooked. Go below.”

I inflicted as light a punishment as I well could on Ellis. After he had undergone it, he came to me and expressed his regret at having lost his temper, without in any way attempting to exculpate himself.

We reached Halifax, remained there a fortnight refitting, and again sailed to cruise off the coast. Nova Scotia possesses a rocky, forbidding shore, near which a seaman would dislike to be caught with a gale blowing on it. One night, on a passage round to Prince Edward’s Island, we had kept closer in shore, in consequence of the fineness of the weather, than would, under other circumstances, have been prudent. The captain was ill below. Suddenly the wind shifted, and blew directly on shore. I was called up, and hurrying on deck, saw at once that we were to have a rough night of it.