one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and
scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship
might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in
itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea
--on, on--until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any
shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman
at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who
had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations;
but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or
had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his
companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward
hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or
sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another
on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared
to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those
he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted
to remember him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the
moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it
was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown
abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it
was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear
a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge
to recognise it as his own nephew's and to find himself in a
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling
by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving
affability!
"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a
man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can
say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me,
and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that
while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing
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