THE AWFUL CRISIS.
“Oh! how sweet to feel and know
E’en in this hour of dread, that dear to Thee
Is the confiding spirit!”
E. TAYLOR.
“Henceforth I learn that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God; to walk
As in His presence; ever to observe
His providence, and on Him sole depend,
Merciful over all His works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek!”
MILTON.
It is the darkest hour of night, that hour which precedes the dawn. A
thousand stars are spangling the deep azure of the sky, looking down,
like angels’ eyes, on a world of sin and sorrow. Augustine’s gaze is
fixed upon one beauteous planet, which, in its calm light, outshines the
tremulous glory of the constellations. Mabel has wearily fallen asleep
where she sits, resting her head on her arm, the piercing cold of the
upper air making her slumber the deeper. The earl, still stretched at the
bottom of the car, is also finding a short oblivion of woe, and in dreams
is wandering again upon the warm, bright, joyous earth, with Annabella at
his side.
Augustine, on his dizzy height, in the stillness of the hour, feels
himself alone with his God. The conversation held at the vicarage with
his brother now recurs to his mind with a deep and solemn effect.
Augustine draws a mental parallel between his own present awful position
and that in which his soul has for so long unfearingly remained. Has he
not been, as it were, floating between earth and heaven, carried up by
his pride, full inflated as that swollen ball which is at this moment
bearing him onward perhaps to destruction! Has he any reason to rejoice
that he has risen high above the mass of his fellow-creatures, if his
very exaltation prove the means of his deeper fall!
“Yes, fool that I was! I believed my intellect formed to pierce through
the mists, to rise above the clouds, to find for itself a path that
no mortal had discovered before! With proud presumption I refused the
guidance of Faith in those regions to which Faith alone has access. I
trusted to reason—philosophy—genius!—what have they done for me here? I
have proved unequal even to the task of regulating the motions of this
silken machine, yet I feared not to steer my own way through the vast
mysteries of spiritual knowledge! As regards the soul as well as its
mortal tenement, I have been the sport of the changing winds, enwrapt in
the seething mist, struggling on through thickening darkness—and to what
point now have I reached? I see the calm, still stars above me, shining
like the eternal truths which audacious Pride once dared to question; I
view the orbs which for ages unnumbered have kept their steady course
through infinite space, upheld by the Power and Wisdom whose mysteries
I vainly sought to fathom; earth’s lights have all faded and gone,
the brightest illumine no more, the clearest throw no ray on this
darkness,—the gems of the firmament alone, unchanged and unapproachable
by man, are glittering over me still!
“Yes, I feel myself an atom in the vast universe which is filled by
God! And yet man’s moral responsibility—the awful trust of an immortal,
an accountable soul—give a fearful dignity to him still! Am I fit to
appear in the presence of Him before whose throne I so soon may stand?
Is there anything in myself to which I can cling for support in the day
of judgment? Can I plead my merits—my virtues—my works? No; the truth
is forced upon me here, which mortal presumption so long refused to
acknowledge. As well might I fling myself from this car, and falling a
thousand fathoms hope to reach the earth uninjured, as trust to find
safety for a guilty and sentenced soul without the one sacrifice for sin,
the atonement provided for those who with child-like faith rest upon it,
and it only!”
As Augustine pursued his solemn meditations, gradually the stars
became dimmer at the approach of the dawn, even as the heavenly lights
vouchsafed to guide us here, will pale in the radiance of a more perfect
knowledge of a more glorious day; the deep blue sky assumed a somewhat
lighter hue, and the looming outline of the balloon was seen more
distinctly against it.
“Do my eyes deceive me,” thought Augustine, “or is the curve of that
outline less bold than it appeared in the light of the setting sun?
It may be but fancy, but it seems as though the ball were less fully
inflated; I could imagine that I even perceive what resembles a wrinkle
in the silk. God in mercy grant that this new hope be not an illusion!”
As he spoke, something like the smoke-wreath from the mouth of a
discharged cannon floated upwards not far from the car, then another and
another, all ascending lightly from beneath, and mounting high above the
balloon.
“The clouds appear to rise!” exclaimed Augustine eagerly; “a sure sign
that we ourselves are descending!” He started from his seat, and grasping
a rope, looked over into the abyss.
The dim grey twilight scarcely yet sufficed to show objects distinctly,
though not a single cloud now obscured the wide spreading prospect below.
Augustine strained his eyes with gazing for several minutes before he
became fully assured of the nature of what lay beneath him. One long
faint streak of red at length clearly defined the line where the sky met
the rounded horizon; there was no object, not the smallest, to break
that hard sharp line which separated misty blue from deepening crimson;
nor swelling hill, nor rising mountain was there; Augustine’s pulse
beat quicker and he gasped as for breath, for he was now convinced of
two facts, each of thrilling importance,—that the _Eaglet_ was quickly
descending, and that it was descending into the sea!
“The breeze must have borne us above the Channel, and may bear us across
it, if for but one or two hours we can keep the balloon aloft! But the
gas is evidently fast escaping, and unless I lighten the car, we shall
soon be precipitated into the wide waste of waters beneath!”
With almost the rapidity of thought, Augustine caught up the large bag of
ballast and flung it out of the car. In the lapse of—as it seemed—two or
three minutes, a splashing sound distinctly came from below, the first
noise exterior to the car which had reached the ear of Augustine for many
a weary hour. Slight as it was, it seemed sufficient to startle the earl
from his sleep; he opened his eyes, and gave a little start of horror at
the sight of the vast ball above him, which in an instant brought back to
him the consciousness of what had occurred.
“Still this living death!” he exclaimed, and his voice awakened Mabel.
“It is very, very cold,” she murmured drowsily; “and is the night really
gone, and the beautiful morning breaking? These soft rosy clouds are
above us now, perhaps we may see—”
“Do not look down, Mabel!” cried her uncle.
But the word came too late,—the trembling girl was already surveying the
broad, smooth ocean plain.
“Where can we be going?” she exclaimed; “it is one flat blue expanse
below, and there is a scent as if from the sea!”
“We must be over the Channel,” said Dashleigh; “Augustine Aumerle, what
are you doing?”
His friend had lifted up his box of instruments and flung it over the
side; the basket then followed. Augustine laid his hand on the grappling
irons, but paused, till, at a shorter interval than before, the splash
was heard from the sea.
“Are we sinking down?” exclaimed Mabel and Dashleigh as if with one
breath.
Augustine nodded an assent, and threw over the grappling irons. Nothing
remained in the car which could be flung away to lighten the balloon.
“Oh! what will become of us?—what will become of us?” exclaimed Mabel,
clasping her hands in terror, as death in a new form stared her in the
face.
“Nothing will keep the balloon up,” said Augustine Aumerle; “we must
commend our souls to a merciful God.”
“Can you see no ship?” cried the earl; “no object moving on the waters?”
and starting up in the eagerness of hope, he himself looked over the side
of the car, but almost sickening at the dizzy prospect, sank back again
to his place.
How gloriously burst the bright rays streaming from the eastern horizon!
how splendidly rose the sun as a monarch rejoicing in his might,
crimsoning the floating clouds, and casting across the waters a path
of quivering gold! It struck the trembling Mabel with a sense of awful
beauty, as nearer and nearer the _Eaglet_ dropped toward ocean’s liquid
grave! Again the coloured stripes of the ball shone bright in the light
of day, but it was with something of horror that the travellers now
regarded that which Mabel had once playfully spoken of as an emblem of
swollen pride. It had carried them aloft through the clouds to dreary,
deathlike isolation, but failed to support them now in the hour of peril
and distress.
Down—down—down—yet with more rapid and breathless descent, not in
perpendicular fall, but borne sideways by the freshening sea breeze, sank
the once towering _Eaglet_. The white crests of the billows could now be
distinguished, and even the fin of a porpoise that flashed in the sunbeam.
“Might not the car float?” exclaimed Mabel; “it is so buoyant and light!”
“It possibly might for a time,” replied Augustine, “were it not attached
to this frightful incumbrance. Dashleigh,” he asked suddenly, “have you a
knife? I parted yesterday with mine.”
“For what use?” inquired the earl, as he gave a large one which he
happened to have on his person.
There is no time for reply, the _Eaglet_ is nearing the sea;
down—down—down—till with a violent shock which splashes the spray many
feet into the air, the car strikes the waves and rebounds again, its
dripping, gasping occupants clinging hard to prevent themselves from
being flung out into the sea.
Down again—still with terrific violence; it is a frightful scene! The
spirit of a demon appears to animate the balloon,—a spirit that delights
in torturing its miserable victims, as it goes sweeping, dashing,
whirling on, now skimming at some height above the surface of the waters,
now suddenly dipping so low that the half uttered shriek of Mabel is
stifled in the gasping sob of suffocation! No wretch fastened to a wild
horse plunging, rearing, bounding on its way, with steaming nostril and
foaming breath, ever endured the horrors of those dragged onward by that
terrific engine of death, while the half submerged car leaves a long
white bubbling track on the ocean!
Augustine alone loses not his presence of mind in this crisis of
unutterable horror. Though the violent, plunging, unsteady motion of
the partly exhausted balloon makes it difficult for his half drowned
companions to keep their seats, he manages to retain his footing without
clinging, for both his hands are engaged in a desperate effort to cut
asunder the cords of the balloon. It is their only chance of life,—a
miserable chance indeed, but better even to sink at once in the watery
depths, than to be thus given again and again a horrible taste of death,
to be snatched away from it for a moment, only to be precipitated
downwards once more! With the energy of despair the drowning man wields
the flashing knife, one after another the ropes are cut, each that
gives way rendering more fearful the danger of the party—for at length
the horizontal position of the car is actually reversed, the wicker is
suspended by a single cord, and it is only by clasping and clinging with
strained muscles and desperate grasp, that the terrified ones can retain
hold of this, the one frail barrier between themselves and destruction!
Augustine awaits the moment when the lower end of the car just touches
the waves, and then the last cord is severed! In an instant the light
frame is dashed on the billows, the waves splashing around and over it
and the three who almost miraculously have retained their places within
it. The car of wicker work lined with oil-skin is not ill calculated on
an emergency to act the part of a boat, but it is nearly full of water,
and it is only by almost superhuman efforts in baling out the brine with
Mabel’s straw hat and Dashleigh’s beaver (Augustine’s is floating far on
the waves) that the little shell can be kept afloat.
In the meantime the balloon, released from the weight of the car, bursts
upwards like a bird of prey soaring from a field of blood; or, to repeat
my former figure, as if the demon of pride, baffled and wounded like
Apollyon in his conflict with Christian, had “spread his dark wings on
the blast, and fled away to his own habitation!” A wild sensation of joy,
even in the midst of her terror, flashed across the mind of Mabel, as she
saw that terrible minister of destruction borne far away—and for ever!
Perilous as was the situation of the voyagers in their fragile boat,
drenched as they were with salt water, hungry, exhausted, their throats
and lips parched with burning thirst, they seemed but to have exchanged
one form of misery for another. And yet the change from their late
frightful position brought with it some sense of relief. They were
touching, though not solid earth, yet some portion of their native
sphere; they were no longer floating in an ocean of air, cut off by an
impassable gulf from the faintest hope of human assistance. There was
comfort in the sight of the lank brown sea-weed borne on the floating
waves, comfort in the sight of the white winged birds that dipped in the
flashing brine!
But as the day advanced endurance was sorely tried. Without rudder to
steer the little car, or oar to propel, the sufferers could not shut out
the prospect before them of almost certain death. The perpetual baling
out of the water which leaked into their crazy boat, became an exhausting
effort which their fainting frames could not for many hours sustain. Even
Augustine’s features began to acquire the rigid sternness of despair; and
the earl, in silent supplication, commended a young widow to God.
Suddenly Mabel exclaimed with wild transport: “A sail, a sail in the
horizon!”
“But a sea-gull floating on the waves,” replied Augustine, shading his
eyes with his hand from the glare of a meridian sun.
The earl stretched out his blue corpse-like fingers in the direction
indicated by Mabel, and then, raising his hand on high, exclaimed, “It is
a sail—help is near—God be praised! God be praised!”
Then followed a time of intense, almost maddening excitement. Augustine
stood erect in the car, his tall form raised to its utmost height, as he
waved again and again a kerchief as a signal of distress.
“Oh, if they should not see it!” exclaimed Mabel
“Or seeing, disregard it,” murmured the earl.
Again and again a shrill cry for help sounded over the blue expanse. If
the freshening breeze bore back that cry, so that it reached not the ears
for which it was intended, that same breeze was filling the canvas and
bringing near and more near the wished for,—the prayed for relief!
“I think that they see us!” cried Augustine, for the first time during
that terrible day a gleam of joy relaxing his features.
“Oh, my beloved father—my own Ida—shall I behold you again!” exclaimed
Mabel.
“We must not relax our efforts,” said her uncle, “or we shall perish even
in the view of safety.”
She speeds on,—the gallant bark,—dashing onwards “like a thing of life;”
the figure of the steersman is now distinctly visible at her prow, his
rough hail rings clear over the water,—was ever sight so welcome, was
ever sound so sweet! Joy in that never-to-be-forgotten moment proves
more overpowering even than terror, and the firmness which had stood
the strain of most intense anxiety and fear gives way in the rebound of
rapturous thanksgiving and delight!