The night before Christmas, frosty moonlight, the outcast preacher
came down to the island shore and raised his hands to the stars.
"O God! whose word I so long preached in meekness and sincerity," he
cried, "have mercy on my child and its mother, who are poor as were
Thine own this morning, eighteen hundred and forty years ago!"
The moonlight scarcely fretted the soft expanse of Chincoteague Bay.
There seemed a slender hand of silver reaching down from the sky to
tremble on the long chords of the water, lying there in light and
shade, like a harp. The drowsy dash of the low surf on the bar beyond
the inlet was harsh to this still and shallow haven for wreckers and
oystermen. It was very far from any busy city or hive of men, between
the ocean and the sandy peninsula of Maryland.
But no land is so remote that it may not have its banished men. The
outcast preacher had committed the one deadly sin acknowledged amongst
those wild wreckers and watermen. It was not that he had knocked a
drowning man in the head, nor shown a false signal along the shore to
decoy a vessel into the breakers, nor darkened the lighthouse lamp.
These things had been done, but not by him.
He had married out of his race. His wife was crossed with despised
blood.
"What do you seek, preacher?" exclaimed a gruff, hard voice. "Has the
Canaanite woman driven you out from your hut this sharp weather, in
the night?"
"No," answered the outcast preacher. "My heart has sent me forth to
beg the service of your oyster-tongs, that I may dip a peck of
oysters from the cove. We are almost starved."
"And rightly starved, O psalm-singer! You were doing well. Preaching,
ha! ha! Preaching the miracle of the God in the manger, the baby of
the maid. You prayed and travelled for the good of Christians. The
time came when you practised that gospel. You married the daughter of
a slave. Then they cast you off. They outlawed you. You were made
meaner, Levin Purnell, than the Jew of Chincoteague!"
The speaker was a bearded, swarthy, low-set man, who looked out from
the cabin of a pungy boat. His words rang in the cold air like
dropping icicles articulate.
"I know you, Issachar," exclaimed the outcast preacher. "They say that
you are hard and avaricious. Your people were bond slaves once to
every nation. This is the birth night of my faith. In the name of
Joseph, who fed your brethren when they were starving, with their
father, for corn, give me a few oysters, that we may live, and not
die!"
The Jew felt the supplication. He was reminded of Christmas eve. The
poorest family on Chincoteague had bought his liquor that night for a
carouse, or brought from the distant court-house town something for
the children's stockings. Before him was one whose service had been
that powerful religion, shivering in the light of its natal star on
the loneliest sea-shore of the Atlantic. He had harmed no man, yet all
shunned him, because he had loved, and honored his love with a
religious rite, instead of profaning it, like others of his race.
"Take my tongs," replied the Jew. "Dip yonder! It will be your only
Christmas gift."
"Peace to thee on earth and good-will to thee from men!" answered the
outcast.
The preacher raised the long-handled rakes, spread the handles, and
dropped them into the Sound. They gave from the bottom a dull, ringing
tingle along their shafts. He strove to lift them with their weight
of oysters, but his famished strength was insufficient.
"I am very weak and faint," he said. "Oh, help me, for the pity of
God!"
The Jew came to his relief doggedly. The Jew was a powerful,
bow-legged man, but with all his strength he could scarcely raise the
burden.
"By Abraham!" he muttered, "they are oysters of lead. They will
neither let go nor rise."
He finally rolled upon the deck a single object. It broke apart as it
fell. The moonlight, released by his humped shadow, fell upon
something sparkling, at which he leaped with a sudden thirst, and
cried:
"Gold! Jewels! They are mine."
It was an iron casket, old and rusty, that he had raised. Within it,
partly rusted to the case, the precious lustre to which he had devoted
his life flashed out to the o'erspread arch of night, sown thick with
star-dust. A furious strength was added to his body. He broke the
object from the casket and held it up to eyes of increased wonder and
awe. Then, with an oath, he would have plunged it back into the sea.
The outcast preacher interposed.
"It is your Christmas gift, Issachar. _It is a cross._ Curse not! It
cannot harm you nor me. Dip again, and bring me a few oysters, or my
wife may die."
"I know the form of that cross," said the oyster-man. "It is Spanish.
Many a year ago, no doubt, some high-pooped galleon, running close to
the coast, went ashore on Chincoteague and drifted piecemeal through
the inlet, wider then than now. This mummery, this altar toy, destined
for some Papist mission-house, has lain all these years in the
brackish Sound. Ha! ha! That Issachar the Jew should raise a cross,
and on the Christian's Christmas eve! But it is mine! My tongs, my
vessel, myself brought it aboard!"
He seized the preacher's skinny arm with the ferocity of greed.
"I do not claim it, Issachar. My worship is not of forms and images.
Dip again, and help me to my hut with a few oysters, for I am very
faint. Then all my knowledge and interest in this effigy I will
surrender to you."
"Agreed!" exclaimed the Jew, plunging the tongs to the bottom again
and again, in his satisfaction.
They walked inland across the difficult sands, the Jew carrying the
crucifix jealously. Lights gleamed from a few huts along the level
island. At the meanest hut of all they stopped, and heard within a
baby's cry, to which there was no response. The preacher staggered
back with apprehension. The Jew raised the latch and led the way.
The light of some burning driftwood and dried sea-weed filled the low
roof and was reflected back to a cot, on which a woman lay with a
living child beside her. Something dread and ineffable was conveyed by
that stiffened form. The Jew, familiar with misery and all its
indications, caught the preacher in his arms.
"Levin Purnell," he said, "thy Christmas gift has come. Bear up! There
is no more persecution for thee. She is dead!"
The outcast preacher looked once, wildly, on the woman's face, and
with a cry pressed his hands to his heart. The Jew laid him down upon
a miserable pallet, and for a few moments watched him steadily.
Neither sound nor motion revealed the presence of the cold spark of
life. The husband's heart was broken.
"Poor wretch!" exclaimed the Jew. "Mismated couple; in death as
obstinate as in life. Lie there together, befriended in the closing
hour by the Jew of Chincoteague, a present--to-morrow's Christmas--for
thy neighbors of this Christian island!"
He stirred the fire. Death had no terrors for him, who had seen it by
land and sea, in brawls and shipwrecks, by hunger and by scurvy. He
laid the bodies side by side, and warmed the infant at the fire.
Looking up from the living child's face, he caught the sparkle of the
crucifix he had discovered, where it stood in the narrow window-sill.
There were gems of various colors in it, and they reflected the
firelight lustrously, like a slender chandelier, or, as the Jew
remembered in the version of the Evangels, like the gifts those
bearded wise men, of whom he might resemble one, brought to the manger
of the infant Christ--gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Struck
by the conceit, he looked again at the baby's face--the baby but a few
days or weeks old--and he felt, in spite of himself, a softness and
pity.
"It might be true," he muttered, "that a Jewish man, a tricked and
unsuspecting husband of a menial, like her who has perished with this
preacher, _did_ behold a new-born baby in the manger of an inn,
eighteen hundred and forty years ago."
He looked again at the cross. In the relief of the night against the
window-pane its jewels shone like the only living things in the hovel.
A figure was extended upon this cross, and every nail was a precious
stone; the crown of thorns was all diamonds.
"It might be true," he said again, "that on a cross-beam like that,
the manger baby perished for some audacity--as I might be put to death
if I mocked the usages of a whole nation, as this preacher has done."
The cross, an object as high as one of the window-panes, and suffused
with the exuding dyes of its jewels, took now a dewy lustre, as if
weeping precious gum and amber. The Jew felt an instant's sense of
superstition, which he dashed away, and placing the child, already
sleeping, before the fire, awakened rapacity led him to hunt the hovel
over. He found nothing but a few religious books, and amongst them a
leather-covered Testament, which he opened and read with
insensibility--passing on, at length, to interest, then to
fascination, at last to rage and defiance--the opening chapters and
the close of the story of Jesus.
"Now, by the sufferings of my patient race! I will do a thing unlike
myself, to prove this testimony a libel. Here is a child more homeless
than this carpenter, Joseph's, without the false pretence of coming
of David's line. Its mother tainted with negro blood, like the slaves
I have imported. Its father the obscurest preacher of his sect. I will
rob the shark and the crab of a repast. It shall be my child and a
Hebrew. Yea, if I can make it so, a Rabbi of Israel!"
Issachar looked again at the cross. Day was breaking in the window
behind it, and the rich light of its gems was obscurer, but its form
and proportions seemed to have expanded--perhaps because he had worn
his eyes reading by the firelight--and the outstretched figure looked
large as humanity, and the cross lofty and real, as that which it was
made to commemorate. He hid it beneath his garment, and walked forth
into the gray dawn of Christmas. One star remained in mid-heaven,
whiter than the day. It poised over the hovel of the dead like
something new-born in the sky, and unacquainted with its fellow orbs.
"Christmas gift!" shouted a party of lads and women, rushing upon the
Jew. "Christmas gift! You are caught, Issachar. Give us a present, old
miser!"
It was the custom in that old settled country that whoever should be
earliest up, and say "Christmas gift!" to others, should receive some
little token in farthings or kind.
"Bah!" answered the Jew. "Look in yonder, where the best of your
religion lie, perished by your inhumanity, and behold your Christmas
gift to them!"
There, where no friendly feet but those of negroes and slaves had
entered for months, the strengthening morning showed a young wife,
almost white, and the most beautiful of her type, with comely
features, and eyes and hair that the proudest white beauty might envy.
The gauntness of death had scarcely diminished those charms which had
brought the pride of the world's esteem and the prudence of religion
to her feet, and lifted her to virtuous matrimony, only to banish her
lover from the hearthstones of his race and make them both outcasts,
the poorest of the creatures of God, even on Chincoteague. A slight
sense of self-accusation touched the bystanders.
"He was a good preacher," said one, "and I was converted under him. He
baptized my children. That he should have married a darkey!"
"She was a pious girl," added another, "and from her youth up was in
temptation, which she resisted, like a white woman. That she should
have ruined this preacher!"
"He was a poet," said a third. "'Peared like as if he believed every
thing he preached. But, my sakes! we can't have sich things in _our_
church."
"She loved him, too, the hussy!" exclaimed a fourth. "She would have
been his slave if he had asked her. Oh! what misery she felt when she
knew that his passion for her was starving him, body and soul!"
They slipped away, with a feeling that, somehow, two very guilty
people had been punished in those two. The negroes made the funeral
procession. The Jew walked amongst the negroes.
"O Father Abraham," he said, chuckling to himself, "forgive me that I
stand here, no renegade to my faith, yet the only white Christian on
Chincoteague!"
Issachar was oyster-man, sailor, and sutler in one. He advanced money
to build pungy boats, knit nets, and make huts. He kept a trading
place, packed fish, and dealt with the Eastern port cities by a
schooner whose crew he shipped himself and sometimes commanded her. He
was a wrecker, too, prompt and enterprising; passed middle life, but
full of vitality; bold and cunning in equal degree; and he had been,
it was guessed, a slaver, and some said a pirate. He was called by the
negroes the King of Chincoteague. His schooner was named The Eli.
Chincoteague is the principal inhabited island along the one hundred
miles of coast between the capes of the Delaware and of the
Chesapeake--a coast of low bars, divided into long and slender islands
by a dozen inlets, which, almost filled with sand, permit only
light-draught vessels to enter; and it is destruction to any ship to
go ashore on that coast, where five successive lighthouses warn the
commerce of the Atlantic off, but are unable to intimidate the storms
which sweep the low shores and almost threaten to leap over the
peninsula and submerge it. Chincoteague lies like a tongue between two
inlets, and partly protrudes into the sea, but is also sheltered in
part by the bar of Assateague, whose light has flamed for years.
Chincoteague is about ten miles long, and behind it an inland bay
stretches continuously, under various names, for thirty miles,
protected from the ocean, and scarcely flavored with its salt, except
near the outlet at Chincoteague, where the oysters lie in the brackish
sluices, and all sorts of fish, from shrimps to sharks, hover around
the oyster beds. In the green depths they can be seen, and there the
crab darts sidewise, like a shooting star. In the sandy beach grows
the mamano, or snail-clam, putting his head from his shell at high
tide to suck nutrition from the mysterious food of the sea, and giving
back such chowder to man as makes the eater feel his stomach to
possess a nobility above the pleasures of the brain. The bay of
Chincoteague is five or six miles wide, and the nearest hamlet is in
Virginia, as is Chincoteague island also. The hamlet takes the name of
Horntown, and not far from there is the old court-house seat of Snow
Hill, in Maryland. Every soul on Chincoteague was native there or
thereabout, except Issachar the Jew.
He had appeared amongst them after a sudden storm, the solitary
survivor of a wreck that had partly drifted ashore, and, as he said,
gone down with all his fortune. The mild air and easy livelihood of
the spot pleased the Jew, after his first despair, and he set about
making another fortune. Capable, solitary and active, he soon
outstripped all the people of the islands, and neither beloved nor
unbeloved, lived grimly, as chance ordained, and until now, had never
shown more than business benevolence. It was a surprising thing to the
people of Chincoteague, when the news went round that he had been over
to court at Drummond-town and given his recognizance to bring up the
orphan boy--whom he named Abraham Purnell--so that the county should
not be at the expense of him, and he also brought out from New York,
on the Eli's next trip, a Hebrew woman to be the boy's matron. Suckled
at a negro's breast, Abraham grew to a vigorous youth, resembling his
guardian's race and his mother's as well, in the curling nature of his
hair and the brightness of his eyes. The Old Testament Scriptures
alone were taught him, and Issachar himself joined the family circle
at daily prayer to encourage the faith of Israel in the stranger. The
finest of the lean, tough ponies, bred only on Chincoteague, and
renowned throughout the peninsula for their endurance, was bought for
the boy, as he grew older. He was made Issachar's companion, and, in
course of time, passed in fireside talk for a Jew, like his protector.
Only once the superior comfort and clothing of Issachar's _protégé_
provoked the remark from one of a group of men that Abraham was "only
a stuck-up nigger, anyway;" and then, like a maniac, Old Issachar
dashed from his store with a boat-hook and struck down the offender
like a dead man.
But the boy was of such docile and beautiful nature that he excited no
general antagonism. He was four removals from pure African blood, and
as his mother had been a freed girl, he was a citizen, or might be if
he pleased. The certain heir of Issachar's possessions, the only thing
except gold that Issachar loved, and of a parentage which linked
misfortune with piety, his mysterious nativity gave him with the
negroes a sacred character. They believed that he would become their
king and priest and lead them out of bondage to a promised land; and
this involuntary homage so pleased old Issachar that his heart
inclined toward the black race above the Christian whites around him.
If an aged negro fell sick, the Jew sent, by his ward, medicine and
food. If a very poor negro was buried, the Jew contributed to the
expenses. He gave the first counsel of worldly wisdom to the negro
freedmen, and gave them faithful interest on their savings. One slave
that he possessed he set free, saying:
"By Jacob's staff! I will not hold as cattle the blood people of my
son!"
His enlarged benevolence made no difference in his business. It grew
to the widest limits of that humble society, and by the accident of a
younger life coming forward to bear his honor up, Issachar grew into
sympathy with the social life of all the lower peninsula. If they
wanted money for public enterprise on the mainland, the Jew of
Chincoteague was first to be thought of. His credit, Masonic in its
reach, extended to his compatriots in distant cities, and the
politicians crossed the Sound to bring him into alliance with their
parties. To personal flattery he was obtuse, except when it reached
his ward, and then a melting mood came over him. At every Christmas he
led himself the eloquent Oriental prayer, young Abraham responding
with even a richer imagery, for his mind was alert, his schooling had
been private and unintermittent, and his father's enthusiasm and his
mother's docility made him a poet and a son together.
"My son," said the Jew, as Abraham's fifteenth Christmas approached,
"the time is at hand when we must part for years. I am growing old,
and the loss of thee, O my love! is harder than thou canst know. The
sands of life are running out with me, as from an hour-glass. With
thee the heavens are rosy and the world is new. Thou beautiful Samuel,
Jehovah's selected one! Wilt thou remember me when far away?"
"Father," answered Abraham, "what besides thee can I love? Every
morning, and at noon, and again at night, I will face from the East to
pray toward thee; for God will not listen unless I am grateful to my
father."
"Thou art going to Amsterdam," said Issachar. "There, amongst the
noblest Jews of Europe, the descendants of the Jewish Portuguese, the
Hebrew tongue in its purity, the law of Moses in its majesty, our lore
in its plenitude, thou wilt learn. I look to thee, adopted child of
Israel! to give the promise of thy youth to the study of our grand old
religion, and, like the infant Moses, discovered amongst these
bulrushes of Chincoteague, to be the reviver of our faith, the
statesman of our sect. Yea! the rebuilder of our Zion. It has been
ordained that these things will be done, and, by the stars of Abraham;
it shall be so!"
"My father," said young Abraham, "God will keep all His promises."
The Jew took from a chest of massive cedar wood, empty of all besides,
the precious crucifix.
"Look on that," he exclaimed. "Dost thou know what it represents?"
"No," answered Abraham.
"It is the symbol of the faith in which thy father died. A Hebrew
impostor, one Jesus, was nailed by the Roman conquerors of Jerusalem
to a cross-piece of wood. He affected to be the son of David and the
Saviour of men. My son, in the name of his punishment the children of
Israel have been burned at the stake, dispersed abroad among the
nations, and hated of mankind. Preaching his imposture thy father and
thy mother were suffered to die for their consistency. See what I have
done with the bauble! The years I have expended on thy mind and
comfort have cost me money. From that crucifix, one by one, I have
plucked the precious stones for thy education. Here, from the side,
where they say the soldier's spear was thrust, I have sold the costly
ruby. The nail in the feet, a sapphire, paid thy Jewish matron. The
emerald in this right hand purchased thy books. I send thee abroad
with the price of the diamonds in the crown."
"Father," said young Abraham, "the image is hallowed to me for thy
piety. It is Humanity, O my father! that has made me devoutly a Jew,
and thee, unsuspectingly, a Christian."
He sailed away upon the Eli. His parting words had affected old
Issachar so much that his mind returned along the course of years to
the Christmas night he had passed in the outcast preacher's hut, and
the curious story of Jesus he had read there in the New Testament and
in the presence of the dead.
"To-morrow is Christmas," said the Jew; "a hallowed day to me, because
it brought me a son whose obedience and piety have gratified the exile
of my old age. Although these Christians have covered him with their
despite, his excellent charity remembers it not. I will be no less
magnanimous, and I will cross the bay and attend the Methodist worship
at Snow Hill on Christmas morning, that I may communicate its
frivolity to my son."
He kept his word; and for fear thieves might discover and steal the
valuable crucifix, he hid it beneath his vesture and carried it to the
mainland. The little plank meeting-house at the edge of Snow Hill was
filled with whites on the floor, but in the end gallery, amongst the
negroes, Issachar haughtily took his seat, an object of wonder to both
races, for his face and reputation were generally recognized. Perhaps
it was for this reason that the young preacher, a gentle, graceful
person, adapted his sermon to the sweetness of the Christian story
rather than bear upon those descriptions which might antagonize his
Jewish auditor.
He told the story of the world's selfishness when Christ appeared; how
the Jews, living in the straitest of sectarian aristocracies, inviting
and receiving no accessions, had finally fallen under the dogmatism of
the uncharitable Pharisees, who esteemed themselves the only righteous
devotees and doctrinaires amongst the millions of people on the earth.
Jesus, a youth of good Jewish extraction, and honorable family, had
been bold enough to denounce Phariseeism and make its votaries
ridiculous. He was scorned by them, if for no other crime, for the
cheap offence, in a bigoted age, denominated blasphemy. Here the
preacher, looking toward the Jew, paid a tribute to the antiquity and
loyalty of the better class of Jews, and said that it was well known
that one of his own forerunners in the Christian ministry, dying in
penury from the consequences of a marital mistake, had been befriended
in his death and in his posterity by a gallant follower of the House
of Israel.
The congregation, facing about to look at the Jew in the gallery,
amongst the negroes, were surprised to see tears on his gray
eyelashes, and the colored elders, who loved Issachar exceedingly,
exclaimed, in stentorian chorus:
"Praise God for dat Israelite, in whom dar is no guile! Hallelujah!"
Then, as if the Christmas frost had melted, these grateful
exclamations made warmth at once in both races, and encouraged the
orator in his extemporization. Issachar began to appreciate the
possibility of the founder of a more liberal sect of Jews, whose
charitable hand should be extended to Gentiles also, and whose heaven
should comprehend all the posterity of Adam. Perhaps his son's
portrait was in his mind--that loving son who had but just departed in
the interests of the law of Moses and the restoration of the Temple.
At the end of the sermon alms were invited for the support of the
minister and the propagation of such a gospel as he had preached. With
a mixture of pride and humility old Issachar descended the gallery
stairs and walked up the aisle, and, taking the crucifix from his
breast, planted it upon the altar.
"There," he said, "if your sect asserts the sentiments of this sermon,
you are entitled to this rich image. I am repaid for its possession by
a son of Gentile parentage whose obedience has been the delight of my
old years, and for the gift God has given me in him, I tender you
this counterfeit of Jesus nailed on the Roman scaffold."
The congregation gazed a minute at the golden cross. Ireful laughter
broke forth, followed by rage.
"The pagan! The papist! The Turk! The idolater!" they exclaimed. "He
mocks the memory of our Saviour on Christmas morning! Out with him!"
The Jew recovered the crucifix and put it beneath his mantle. He
vouchsafed no reply except a scornful "Ha! ha! ha!" and with this he
strode out of the Methodist meeting, rejoined his boatmen, and
returned to the island of Chincoteague.
Years passed, and the Jew grew very feeble. He had lasted his
fourscore and ten years, and prosperity had attended him through all,
and children loved him; but, true to his first and only fondness, his
heart was ever across the sea, where gentle Abraham, studiously intent
amongst the Rabbis, communicated with his father by every mail and
raised the old man's mind to a height of serious appreciation which
greed and commerce had never given him. Although hungering for his
boy, Issachar forebore to disturb young Abraham's studies until a
bitter illness came to him, and in his gloom and solitude his great
want burst from his lips, and he said aloud:
"Almighty Father! What will it avail to these old bones if the Temple
be rebuilded, and I die without placing my hands on the eyelids of my
boy and blessing him in Thy name? I will pluck from this Christian
image the last jewel and dispose of it, that he may return and place
his hands in mine, and receive my benediction, and gladden me with his
gratitude."
The image was therefore wholly separated from the cross. Nothing
remained but the figure in gold of that bloody Pillory on which He
died on whom two hundred millions of human beings rely for
intercession with their Creator and Destiny.
The days seemed months to the Jew of Chincoteague. The negroes
gathered round his cabin to be of assistance if he should require it;
for they also looked for young Abraham as the Shiloh of their race,
and would have died for old Issachar, unredeemed as they thought him,
except by his goodness to their prince and favorite.
A high tide, following a series of dreadful storms, arose on the coast
of the peninsula, as if the Gulf Stream, like a vast ploughshare, had
thrown the Atlantic up from its furrow and tossed it over the beach of
Assateague.
The sturdy ponies were all drowned. The sea was undivided from the
bay. Pungy boats and canoes drifted helplessly along the coast, and
the Eli alone was out of danger in the harbor of New York, waiting to
receive young Abraham. At last the freshet crept over the house-tops,
and nothing remained but the cottage of the Jew, planted on piles,
which lifting it higher than the surrounding houses, yet threatened it
the more if the water should float it from its pedestal and send it to
sea. Every effort was made to induce the Jew to abandon it, but he was
obdurate.
"By the tables of the law!" he said, "living or dead, here will I
abide until my son returns."
The bravest negro left the island of Chincoteague at last, placing
food beside old Issachar, and there he lay upon his pallet, with
nothing to pierce the darkness of his lair except that sacred cross he
had raised from the depths of the ocean. That object, like a sentient,
overruling thing, still shed its lustre upon the wretched interior of
the deserted hut, and, day by day, repeated its story to the neglected
occupant.
The mighty storm increased in power as Christmas approached, in the
year one thousand eight hundred and fifty----. Wrecks came ashore on
the submerged shoal of Chincoteague, but there were now no wreckers to
labor for salvage. The Eli, too, was overdue. One night a familiar gun
was heard at sea, thrice, and twice thrice, and Issachar raised up and
said, in anguish:
"It is my schooner. My son is at hand and in danger. Oh! for a day's
strength, as I had it in my youth, to go to his relief through the
surf. But, miserable object that I am! I cannot rise from my bed. What
help, what hope, in the earth or in heaven can I implore?"
The naked cross beamed brightly all at once in the darkness of the
cabin. Issachar felt the legend it conveyed, and with piety, not
apostacy, he uttered:
"O Paschal Lamb! O Waif of God! Die Thou for me this night, and give
me to look upon the countenance of my son!"
The Jew, intently gazing at the cross, passed into such a stupor or
ecstasy that he had no knowledge of the flight of time. He only knew
that, after a certain dreamy interval, the door of his house yielded
to a living man, and, nearly naked with breasting the surf and
fighting for life, young Abraham staggered into the hut and recognized
his father.
"O son!" cried Issachar, "I feel the news thou hast to tell. The Eli
is wrecked and thou only hast survived. The moments are precious.
Hark! this house is yielding to the buoyant current. Stay not for me,
whose sands are nearly run. I am too old to try for life or fear to
die, but thou art full of youth and beauty, and Israel needs thee in
the world behind me. Let me bless thee, Abraham, and commit thee to
God."
The water entered the cracks of the cabin; a pitching motion, as if it
were afloat, made the son of the negro cling closer to the Jew.
"Father," he said, "I have passed the bitterness of death. When the
vessel struck and threw me into the surf, I cried to God and fought
for life. The waves rolled over me, and the agony of dying so young
and happy grew into such a terror that I could not pray. In my despair
a something seemed to grasp me, like tongs of iron, and my eyes were
filled with light, bright as the face of the I AM. Behold! I am here,
and that which saved me has made me content to die by thee."
The old man drew the dripping ringlets of the younger one to his
venerable beard. The house rocked like a sailing vessel, and the
strong sea-fogs seemed to close them round.
"We are sailing to sea," whispered the Jew. "It is too late to escape.
The next billow may fling us apart, and our bones shall descend
amongst the oyster-shells to build houses for the nutritious beings of
the water. Thence, some day, my son, from the heavens God may drop His
tongs and draw us up to Him, as on this night thy father and I drew
the casket, many years ago. Look there! Look there!"
The heads of both were turned toward the spot where the finger of the
old man pointed, and they saw the denuded cross shining in the light
of the agitated fire, so large and bright that it reduced all other
objects to insignificance.
"It was a light like that," exclaimed Abraham, "which shone in my eyes
through the darkness of the billows."
"It was on that," whispered Issachar, "that I called for help, my son,
when thou wert dying. From the hour I dipped it from the water my
heart has been warmer to the world and man. Is there, in all the hoary
traditions of our church, a reason why we should not beseech its
illumination again before it returns to the ocean with ourselves? Do
thou decide, who art full of wisdom; for I am ignorant in thy eyes,
and heavy with sins."
The cross, resplendent, seemed to wear a visible countenance. Wrapped
in Issachar's arms, like a babe to its mother, young Abraham extended
his hands to the effigy, and in its beams a wondrous consolation of
love and rest returned to those poor companions, reconciling them to
their helplessness in the presence of the Almighty awe.
"Child of God!" exclaimed the Jew, "thou beauty of the Gentiles, I
gave thee life but for a span, and thou seemest to bring to me the
life immortal."
The morning broke on the shore frosty and clear after the subsided
storm, and the earliest wreckers, seeking in the drift for Christmas
gifts to give their children, found well-remembered parts of the Eli
and portions of the tenement of its proprietor. A wave rolled higher
than the rest and cast upon the shore two bodies--a young man of the
comely face and symmetry of a woman, without a sign of pain in his
features and dark, oriental eyes, and an old man, venerable as an
inhabitant of the ocean and mysterious as a being of some race
anterior to the deluge. In his rugged face the marks of that antiquity
which has something stately in the lowest types of the Jew, and in
this one an almost Mosaic might, were softened to a magnanimity where
death had nothing to contribute but its silence and respect. Laying
them together, the fishermen and idlers looked at them with a
superstition partly of remorse and mild remembrance, and the star of
Christmas twinkled over them in the sky. None felt that they were
other than father and son, and black men and white, indifferent that
day to social prejudices, followed the child of Hagar and the Hebrew
patriarch to the grave.