THE STORM.
The place in which Blair and his companion found themselves was a small
strongly built closet, used as a "lock-up" for refractory sailors. A
single bull's-eye admitted a mere glimmer of light for a while, but that
soon died away in utter darkness as the night came rapidly on. It was
well for the boys that they knew something of ocean's rough rocking. A
land-lubber would have had all the miseries of sea-sickness added to the
horrors of that dreary dungeon.
A new exaltation of spirit had come over Blair. Difficulties and dangers
seemed as nothing to him while in the path of duty. He feared neither
the raging elements nor the power of angry enemies. He had the promise
that those who trust in God shall never be moved, and in this strong
refuge he was safe.
Not so with poor Hal. The dread of death had seized him, and absorbed
all other thoughts. He could not but think of the horrors into which he
should be plunged if he suddenly found a watery grave. Prayer seemed
impossible for him, as in a kind of agonized waiting he met every plunge
and reel of the storm-tossed ship.
Ah, the time of peril is not the best time to make one's peace with God.
When heart and flesh fail, the soul shrinks in dismay before its coming
doom. Even the wild prayers for deliverance which may burst from the
affrighted soul, what will they avail at the judgment? Are they the
cries of the contrite heart mourning for its sins against a holy,
loving, and beneficent heavenly Father? Are they not rather but as the
shrieks of the criminal who sees no escape from his merited retribution?
Alas for him who postpones his day of repentance till face to face with
the king of terrors. It is he only who is strong in his great Deliverer
who can see that icy beckoning hand, and amid the shrinking of human
nature find himself calm in the strength which only God supplies. If the
agonies or the stupor of the sick-bed unfit the soul to seek peace with
God in the dying hour, even so does the anguish of such fear as now
bowed poor Hal to the earth.
As the English lad crouched in his terror, Blair knelt at his side and
prayed earnestly for him to that God who seemed to the young Christian
but the more surely at hand, for the tokens of his power that made that
mighty ship quiver like a leaf in the autumn wind.
Worn out with the excess of his own strong emotion, Hal at length sank
into a deep slumber, and rolled and tossed with the vessel like a
lifeless thing. Blair feared the poor boy had actually died of terror;
but he soon convinced himself that there was yet motion in that heart
which had throbbed so truly for him.
There was no sleep for Blair during that long wild night. In the
intensity of his excitement, his thoughts flew through his mind with a
vividness and a swiftness that made him almost feel that he was tasting
a new and higher kind of existence. Spiritual things were as real to him
as his own identity, and the God in whom he trusted seemed at his side
as a familiar friend. Of his mother too he could think without a tear.
He was sure that if left childless, she would be comforted and sustained
and gently led along her lonely pathway. Had he not been fulfilling her
oft-repeated counsel, to fear nothing but sin? Had he not vindicated
that love of his native land, which she had taught him should be next to
his allegiance to God? She might never know his fate. Yet she would
mourn for him as for one who died in his effort to fulfil the duties of
his absent father, and risked his own life to save the human freight of
a ship from wreck and sure destruction.
Daylight brought but a feeble glimmer to Blair's dark prison-house, yet
he welcomed it as the assurance of dawn--dawn which is ever welcome to
the watcher, though it may usher in a day of double danger.