Part 91 (1/2)
”Think ye I am in earnest? Let me but win safe to land, I'll not give him a rush dip.”
Others lay flat and prayed to the sea. ”O most merciful sea! O sea most generous! O bountiful sea! O beautiful sea! be gentle, be kind, preserve us in this hour of peril.”
And others wailed and moaned in mere animal terror each time the ill-fated s.h.i.+p rolled or pitched more terribly than usual; and she was now a mere plaything in the arms of the tremendous waves.
A Roman woman of the humbler cla.s.s sat with her child at her half-bared breast, silent amid that wailing throng: her cheek ashy pale; her eye calm; and her lips moved at times in silent prayer, but she neither wept, nor lamented, nor bargained with the G.o.ds. Whenever the s.h.i.+p seemed really gone under their feet, and bearded men squeaked, she kissed her child; but that was all. And so she sat patient, and suckled him in death's jaws; for why should he lose any joy she could give him; moribundo? Ay, there I do believe, sat Antiquity among those mediaevals.
Sixteen hundred years had not tainted the old Roman blood in her veins; and the instinct of a race she had perhaps scarce heard of taught her to die with decent dignity.
A gigantic friar stood on the p.o.o.p with feet apart, like the Colossus of Rhodes, not so much defying, as ignoring, the peril that surrounded him.
He recited verses from the canticles with a loud, unwavering voice; and invited the pa.s.sengers to confess to him. Some did so on their knees, and he heard them, and laid his hands on them, and absolved them as if he had been in a snug sacristy, instead of a peris.h.i.+ng s.h.i.+p. Gerard got nearer and nearer to him, by the instinct that takes the wavering to the side of the impregnable. And, in truth, the courage of heroes facing fleshly odds might have paled by the side of that gigantic friar, and his still more gigantic composure. Thus, even here, two were found who maintained the dignity of our race: a woman, tender, yet heroic, and a monk steeled by religion against mortal fears.
And now, the sail being gone, the sailors cut down the useless mast a foot above the board, and it fell with its remaining hamper over the s.h.i.+p's side. This seemed to relieve her a little.
But now the hull, no longer impelled by canvas, could not keep ahead of the sea. It struck her again and again on the p.o.o.p, and the tremendous blows seemed given by a rocky mountain, not by a liquid.
The captain left the helm and came amids.h.i.+ps pale as death. ”Lighten her,” he cried. ”Fling all overboard, or we shall founder ere we strike, and lose the one little chance we have of life.” While the sailors were executing this order, the captain, pale himself, and surrounded by pale faces that demanded to know their fate, was talking as unlike an English skipper in like peril as can well be imagined. ”Friends,” said he, ”last night, when all was fair, too fair, alas! there came a globe of fire close to the s.h.i.+p. When a pair of them come it is good luck, and nought can drown her that voyage. We mariners call these fiery globes Castor and Pollux. But if Castor come without Pollux, or Pollux without Castor, she is doomed. Therefore, like good Christians, prepare to die.”
These words were received with a loud wail.
To a trembling inquiry how long they had to prepare, the captain replied, ”She may, or may not, last half an hour; over that, impossible; she leaks like a sieve; bustle, men, lighten her.”
The poor pa.s.sengers seized on everything that was on deck and flung it overboard. Presently they laid hold of a heavy sack; an old man was lying on it, sea sick. They lugged it from under him. It rattled. Two of them drew it to the side; up started the owner, and, with an unearthly shriek, pounced on it. ”Holy Moses! what would you do? 'Tis my all; 'tis the whole fruits of my journey; silver candlesticks, silver plates, brooches, hanaps--”
”Let go, thou h.o.a.ry villain,” cried the others, ”shall all our lives be lost for thy ill-gotten gear?” ”Fling him in with it,” cried one; ”'tis this Ebrew we Christian men are drowned for.” Numbers soon wrenched it from him and heaved it over the side. It splashed into the waves. Then its owner uttered one cry of anguish, and stood glaring, his white hair streaming in the wind, and was going to leap after it, and would, had it floated. But it sank, and was gone for ever; and he staggered to and fro, tearing his hair, and cursed them and the s.h.i.+p, and the sea, and all the powers of heaven and h.e.l.l alike.
And now the captain cried out: ”See, there is a church in sight. Steer for that church, mate, and you, friends, pray to the saint, who'er he be.”
So they steered for the church and prayed to the unknown G.o.d it was named after. A tremendous sea p.o.o.ped them, broke the rudder, and jammed it immovable, and flooded the deck.
Then wild with superst.i.tious terror some of them came round Gerard.
”Here is the cause of all,” they cried. ”He has never invoked a single saint. He is a heathen; here is a pagan aboard.”
”Alas, good friends, say not so,” said Gerard, his teeth chattering with cold and fear. ”Rather call these heathens, that lie a praying to the sea. Friends, I do honour the saints,--but I dare not pray to them now,--there is no time--(oh!) what avail me Dominic, and Thomas and Catherine? Nearer G.o.d's throne than these St. Peter sitteth; and, if I pray to him, it's odd, but I shall be drowned ere he has time to plead my cause with G.o.d. Oh! oh! oh! I must need go straight to him that made the sea, and the saints, and me. Our father, which art in heaven, save these poor souls and me that cry for the bare life! Oh sweet Jesus, pitiful Jesus, that didst walk Genezaret when Peter sank, and wept for Lazarus dead when the apostles' eyes were dry, oh save poor Gerard--for dear Margaret's sake!”
At this moment the sailors were seen preparing to desert the sinking s.h.i.+p in the little boat, which even at that epoch every s.h.i.+p carried; then there was a rush of egotists; and thirty souls crowded into it.
Remained behind three who were bewildered, and two who were paralyzed, with terror. The paralyzed sat like heaps of wet rags, the bewildered ones ran to and fro, and saw the thirty egotists put off, but made no attempt to join them: only kept running to and fro, and wringing their hands. Besides these there was one on his knees praying over the wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, as large as life, which the sailors had reverently detached from the mast. It washed about the deck, as the water came slus.h.i.+ng in from the sea, and pouring out at the scuppers; and this poor soul kept following it on his knees, with his hands clasped at it, and the water playing with it, And there was the Jew, palsied, but not by fear. He was no longer capable of so petty a pa.s.sion. He sat cross-legged, bemoaning his bag, and, whenever the spray lashed him, shook his fist at where it came from, and cursed the Nazarenes, and their G.o.ds, and their devils, and their s.h.i.+ps, and their waters, to all eternity.
And the gigantic Dominican, having shriven the whole s.h.i.+p, stood calmly communing with his own spirit. And the Roman woman sat pale and patient, only drawing her child closer to her bosom as death came nearer.
Gerard saw this and it awakened his manhood. ”See! see!” he said, ”they have ta'en the boat and left the poor woman and her child to perish.”
His heart soon set his wit working.
”Wife, I'll save thee yet, please G.o.d.” And he ran to find a cask or a plank to float her. There was none.
Then his eye fell on the wooden image of the Virgin. He caught it up in his arms, and, heedless of a wail that issued from its wors.h.i.+pper, like a child robbed of its toy, ran aft with it. ”Come, wife,” he cried.
”I'll lash thee and the child to this. 'Tis sore worm eaten; but 'twill serve.”
She turned her great dark eye on him and said a single word: