There could be no doubt about the depth of the impression which the
strange figure and his unusual garb produced upon the people.
There he stood on the high ground above the houses, the man who had
prophesied the end of the world, while beneath them tumbled the waves of
a sea where they had never seen sea water before! The occurrence,
being so far outside their experience, had about it the elements of the
supernatural--the aspect of a miracle. Was this the beginning of the end
of all? they asked themselves. To these people the daily ebb and flow of
the tide, ever going on before their eyes, was the type of a regularity
that nothing could change; and never once had the water been forced,
even under the influence of the strongest gale from the southwest,
beyond the summit of the shingle-heap--never until this day.
It was an awful thing that had come to pass before their eyes, and while
their brains were reeling beneath its contemplation there rang out that
voice of warning. The man who had predicted an event that was not more
supernatural in their eyes than the one which had come to their very
feet, was there bidding them repent.
But strange to say, there was not one among the-people assembled
there who made a motion--who cried out in conviction of the need for
repentance, as hundreds had done upon every occasion of John. Wesley's
preaching, although it had contained no element that, in the judgment of
an ordinary person, would appeal with such force to the emotions of the
villagers as did the scene in which Pritchard now played a part.
They remained unmoved--outwardly, however shrinking with terror some of
them may have been. Perhaps it was they felt that the man had, in a way,
threatened them physically, and they had a feeling that it would show
cowardice on their part to betray their fear, or it may have been that,
as was nearly always the case when a prophet came to a people, they
attributed to the bearer of the messages of the ill the responsibility
for the ills which he foretold--however it may have been, the people
only glanced up at the weird figure, and made no move.
But the appearance of the man at that moment had the effect of making
them forget the scene which had immediately preceded the sound of his
voice. No one looked to see whether or not John Bennet had scrambled
back to the beach or had gone under the waters.
“It is coming--it is coming: I hear the sound of the hoofs of the pale
Horse--yonder is the red Horse spoken of by the prophet at Patmos, but
the White Horse is champing his bit. I hear the clink of the steel,
and Death is his rider. He cometh with fire and brimstone.
Repent--repent--repent!”
“I have a mind to make the fellow repent of his impudence,” said Parson
Rodney. “The effrontery of the man trying to make me play a part in his
quackery. I wonder how this water-finder would find the water if I were
to give him the ducking I gave to the other?”
“You would do wrong, sir,” said Wesley. “But I feel that I have no need
to tell you so: your own good judgment tells you that yonder man is to
be pitied rather than punished.”
“Oh, if that is the view you take of the matter, you may be sure that
I'll not interfere,” cried the other. “The fellow may quack or croak or
crow for aught I care.'Twas for you I was having thought. But I've no
intention of constituting my humble self your champion. I wish you well;
and I know that if the world gets over the strain of Monday, we shall
never see you in our neighbourhood again.”
“The elements shall melt with fervent heat. You feel it--you feel it on
your faces to-day: I foretold it, and I was sent to cry unto all that
have ears to hear, 'Repent--repent--repent'!”
“The fellow has got no better manner than a real prophet,” laughed
Parson Rodney; but there was not much merriment in his laughter. “I
have a mind to have him brought before me as an incorrigible rogue and
vagabond,” he continued. “An hour or twain in the stocks would make
him think more civilly of the world. If he becomes bold enough to be
offensive to you, Mr. Wesley, give me a hint of it, and I'll promise you
that I'll make him see more fire and brimstone than he ever did in one
of his ecstatic moods; and so good-day to you, sir.”
He put his horse to a trot, and returned the salutes of the men who were
standing idly watching Pritchard in his very real sackcloth.
But he had scarcely ridden past them when he turned his horse and called
out:
“Wherefore are you idle, good men? Do you mean to forsake the remainder
of your smacks?”
A few of the fishermen looked at one another; they shook their heads;
one of them wiped his forehead.
“'Twill be all the same after Monday, Parson,” said that man.
“You parboiled lobster-grabber!” cried the Parson. “Do you mean to say
that you have the effrontery to believe that addle-pate up there rather
than a clergyman of the Church of England? Look at him. He's not a
man.'Tis a poor cut torn from, a child's picture Bible that he is! Do
you believe that the world would come to an end without your properly
ordained clergyman giving you a hint of it? Go on with your work, if you
are men. Repent? Ay, you'll all repent when 'tis too late, if you fail
to haul up your boats so that their backs get not broken on that ridge.
If you feel that you must repent, do it hauling. And when you've done
your work, come up to the Rectory and cool your throats with a jug of
cider, cool from the cellar, mind.”
“There shall be no more sea,” came the voice of the man on the mound; it
was growing appreciably hoarser.
“No more sea?” shouted the parson. “That's an unlucky shot of yours, my
addle-pated prophet; 'tis too much sea that we be suffering from just
here.”
Wesley had not reseated himself. He put his hand upon Mr. Hartwell's
arm. The latter understood what he meant. They walked away together.
“I have seen nothing sadder for years,” said Wesley. “I have been asking
myself if I am to blame. Should not I have been more careful in regard
to that unhappy man?”
“If blame is to be attached to any it is to be attached to those who
recommended the man to you, and I was among them,” said Hartwell. “I
recall how you were not disposed to accept him into our fellowship by
reason of his work with the divining rod; but we persuaded you against
your judgment. I, for one, shall never forgive myself.”
“Was ever aught so saddening as that travesty of the most solemn
event?” said Wesley. “And then the spectacle of that well-meaning but
ill-balanced man! A clergyman of our Church--you saw him turn to mock
the wretch? He made a jest upon the line that has never failed to send a
thrill through me: 'No more sea.' Shocking--shocking!... Friend, I
came hither with the full intention of administering a rebuke to
Pritchard--of openly letting it be understood that we discountenanced
him. But I did not do so to-day, and I am glad of it. However vain
the man may be--however injuriously he may affect our aims among the
people--I am still glad that I was turned away from saying a word
against him.”
Mr. Hartwell was too practical a man to look at the matter in the same
light. But he said nothing further about Pritchard. When he spoke, which
he did after a time, it was about Bennet. He asked Wesley if he could
guess why the man had spoken to him so bitterly. Why should the man bear
him a grudge?
Wesley mentioned that Bennet had come upon him when he was walking with
Polwhele's daughter from the Mill.
“Ah, that is the form of his madness--he becomes insanely jealous of
anyone whom he sees near that girl. But one might have thought that
you at least--oh, absurdity could go no further! But a jealous man is
a madman; he is incapable of looking at even the most ordinary incident
except through green glasses. You are opposed to clergymen marrying, are
you not, Mr. Wesley? I have heard of your book-----”
“I wrote as I was persuaded at that time,” replied Wesley. “But more
recently--I am not confident that I did not make a mistake in my
conclusions. I am not sure that it is good for a man to be alone; and
a clergyman, of all men, needs the sympathy--the sweet and humane
companionship of a woman.”
“True, sir; but if a clergymen makes a mistake in his choice of a wife,
there can be no question that his influence declines; and so many men
of your cloth wreck themselves on the quicksand of matrimony. I daresay
that 'tis your own experience of this that keeps you single, though you
may have modified your original views on the subject. Strange, is't not,
that we should find ourselves discussing such a point at this time?
But this seems to be the season of strange things, and 'twould be the
greatest marvel of all if we ourselves were not affected. Is it the
terrible heat, think you, that has touched the heads of those two men?”
“I scarce know what I should think,” said Wesley. “The case of Pritchard
is the more remarkable. Only now it occurred to me that there may be a
strange affinity between the abnormal in nature and the mind of such a
man as he.'Twould be idle to contend that he has not been able as a
rule to say where water is to be found on sinking a shaft; I have heard
several persons testify to his skill in this particular--if it may be
called skill. Does not his possession of this power then suggest that
he may be so constituted that his senses may be susceptible of certain
vague suggestions which emanate from the earth, just as some people
catch ague--I have known of such in Georgia--when in the neighbourhood
of a swamp, while others remain quite unaffected in health?”
“That is going too far for me, sir,” said Hartwell. “I do not need to
resort to anything more difficult to understand than vanity to enable
me to understand how Pritchard has changed. The fellow's head has been
turned--that's all.”
“That explanation doth not wholly satisfy me,” said Wesley. “I think
that we have at least some proof that he was sensible of something
abnormal in Nature, and this sensibility acting upon his brain disposed
him to take a distorted view of the thing. His instinct in this matter
may have been accurate; but his head was weak. He receives an impression
of something strange, and forthwith he begins to talk of the Day of
Judgment, and his foolish vanity induces him to think of himself as
a prophet. The Preventive officer thinks that there hath been an
earthquake. Now there can, I think, be no doubt that Pritchard was
sensible of its coming; Pol-whele told you yesterday that he had
predicted an earthquake in the sea, although it seemed that his
illiteracy was accountable for this: and now there comes this remarkable
tide--the highest tide that the memory of man has known.”
“You have plainly been giving the case of Pritchard much of your
attention,” said Hartwell; “but I pray you to recall his account of the
vision which he said came to him when he fell into that trance. 'Twas
just the opposite to a high tide--'twas such an ebbing of the water as
left bare the carcase of the East Indiaman that went ashore on the Dog's
Teeth reef forty years ago.”
“True; but to my way of thinking it matters not whether 'twas a
prodigious ebb or a prodigious flow that he talked of so long as he was
feeling the impression of the unusual--of the extraordinary. Mind you,
I am only throwing out a hint of a matter that may become, if approached
in a proper spirit, a worthy subject for sober philosophical thought.
God forbid that I should take it upon me to say at this moment that the
power shown by that man is from the Enemy of mankind, albeit I have at
times found myself thinking that it could come from no other source.”
“You are too lenient, I fear, Mr. Wesley. For myself, I believe simply
that the man's head has been turned. Is't not certain that a devil
enters into such men as are mad, and have we not proof that witches
and warlocks have sometimes the perverted gift of prophecy, through the
power of their master, the Old Devil?”
“I cannot gainsay it, my brother, and it is because of this you say,
that I am greatly perplexed.”
They had been walking very slowly, for the heat of the day seemed to
have increased, and they were both greatly exhausted. Before entering
Mr. Hartwell's house they stood for a short time looking seaward. There,
as before, the waves danced under the rays of the sun, although not a
breath of air stirred between the sea and the sky. The canopy of the
heaven was blue, but it suggested the blue of hard steel rather than
that of the transparent sapphire or that of the soft mass of a bed of
forget-me-nots, or of the canopy of clematis which clambered over the
porch.
The sun that glared down from the supreme height was like to no other
sun they had ever seen. The haze on its disc, to which the Preventive
officer had drawn their attention an hour earlier, had been slowly
growing in the meantime, until now it was equal to four diameters of the
orb itself, and it was so permeated with the rays that it seemed part of
the sun itself. There that mighty furnace seethed with intolerable fire,
and so singular was the haze that one, glancing for a moment upward with
hand on forehead, seemed to see the huge tongues of flame that burst
forth now and again as they do beneath a copper cauldron on the furnace
of the artificer.
But this was not all, for at a considerable distance from the molten
mass, which had the sun for its core, there was a wide ring apparently
of fire. Though dull as copper for the most part, yet at times there
was a glow as of living and not merely reflected flame, at parts of the
brazen circle, and flashes seemed to go from the sun to this cincture,
conveying the impression of an enormous shield, having the sun as the
central boss of shining brass, on which fiery darts were striking,
flying off again to the brass binding of the targe.
“Another marvel!” said Wesley; “but I have seen the dike more than once
before. Once 'twas on the Atlantic, and the master of our ship, who was
a mariner of experience, told me that that outer circle was due to the
sun shining through particles of moisture. Hold up a candle in the mist
and you have the same thing.”
“I myself have seen it more than once; 'tis not a marvel, though it has
appeared on a day of marvels,” said Hartwell; and forthwith they entered
the house.
They were both greatly exhausted, the fact being that before setting
out for the preaching in the early morning they had taken no more than a
glass of milk and a piece of bread, and during the seven hours that
had elapsed they had tasted nothing, though the day had been a most
exhausting one.
In a very few minutes the cold dinner, with the salad, which had been in
readiness for their return, found them grateful; and after partaking of
it Wesley retired to his room.
He threw himself upon a couch that stood under the window; a group of
trees, though birch and not very bosky, grew so close to the window that
they had made something of a shade to the room since morning, so that
it was the coolest in the house. It was probably this sense of coolness
that refreshed him so far as to place him within the power of sleep. He
had thought it impossible when he entered the house that he should be
able to find such a relief, exhausted as he had been. But now he had
scarcely put his head on the pillow before he was asleep.
Several hours had passed before he opened his eyes again. He was
conscious that a great change of some sort, that he could not at once
define, had taken place. The room was in shadow where before it had
been lighted by flecks of sunshine, but this was not the change which
appealed to him with striking force; nor was it the sense of being
refreshed, of which he was now aware. There was a curious silence in the
world--the change had something to do with the silence. He felt as he
had done in the parlour of Ruthallion Mill when he had been talking
to the miller and the machinery had suddenly stopped for the breakfast
hour. That was his half-awakened thought.
The next moment he was fully awake, and he knew what had happened: when
he had fallen asleep the sound of the waves had been in his ears without
cessation, and now the sea was silent.
He thought that he had never before been in such a silence. It seemed
strange, mysterious, full of awful suggestions. It seemed to his vivid
imagination that the world, which a short time before had been full of
life, had suddenly swooned away. The hush was the hush of death. The
silence was the silence of the tomb. “'Tis thus,” he thought, “that a
man awakens after death--in a place of awful silences.”
And then he felt as if all the men in the world had been cut off in a
moment, leaving him the only man alive.
It continued unbroken while he lay there. It became a nightmare
silence--an awful palpable thing like a Sphinx--a blank dumbness--a
benumbing of all Nature--a sealing up of all the world as in the hard
bondage of an everlasting Winter.
He sprang from his couch unable to endure the silence any longer. He
went to the window and looked out, expecting to see the flat unruffled
surface of the channel, where the numberless waves had lately been,
sparkling with intolerable, brilliance, and every wave sending its voice
into the air to join the myriad-voiced chorus that the sea made.
He looked out and started back; then he drew up the blind and stared out
in amazement, for where the sea had been there was now no sea.
He threw open the window and looked out. Far away in the utter distance
he saw what seemed like a band of glittering crimson on the horizon.
Looking further round and to the west he saw that the sun was more than
halfway down the slope of the heavens in that quarter and it was of the
darkest crimson in colour--large, but no longer fiery.
Then there came a murmur to his ears--the murmur of a multitude of
people; and above this sound came a hoarse, monotonous voice, crying:
“I heard one say to me: 'There shall be no sea--there shall be no more
sea'; and the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood,
before the great and terrible Day of the Lord. Repent--repent--repent!”
Far away he could see the figure of the man. He stood on the summit of
the cliff beyond the path, and, facing the sinking sun, he was crimson
from head to foot. Seen at such a distance and in that light he looked
an imposing figure--a figure that appealed to the imagination, and not
lacking in those elements which for ages have been associated with the
appearance of a fearless prophet uplifting a lean right arm and crying
“Thus saith the Lord.” Wesley listened and heard his cry:
“There shall be no more sea! Repent--repent--repent!”
[Illustration: 0223]