In furthest Ind : $b The narrative of Mr Edward Carlyon of the honourable East India Company's serviceGrier, Sydney C.
General
In furthest Ind : $b The narrative of Mr Edward Carlyon of the honourable East India Company's service
Grier, Sydney C.
British -- India -- Fiction; East India Company -- Fiction; India -- Fiction
But at this the old man waxed very wroth, and rose up and left me,
saying that I was no better than a scoffer, and that Captain Freeman
was yet in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity, and
that ’twas not for him to judge what were profitable or not.
“What preacher of sedition have you on board here, captain?” says I,
when I saw my friend next. “I looked not to find pestilent sectaries
aboard the Boscobel.”
“’Tis old Substitution Darrell you would say,” said he. “A marvellous
gift of exhortation he hath, and would sit up all the night arguing,
so long as his fellows would hear him, and longer. But he is our best
hand, and so staunch in his duty and punctual in the performing on’t
as no one would ever believe. I have been near him in a storm, when
all thought our last hour was come, but he was as cheerful as you may
see him now. ’Twas one of his conditions of service that I should
suffer him to expound the Scriptures to the rest of the crew, so long
as he and they desired, and the Company’s occasions took no damage
thereby, and I have heard him discourse so movingly concerning the
love of God as that I was fain to depart so as he might not see me
weep.”
“But sure you an’t at one with him in his opinions?” I asked.
“Nay,” says the skipper. “Darrell has told me once and again that I am
in Babylon, by the which, as I take it, he signifieth the Church of
England, and bids me come out therefrom, saying that God hath sent to
me by his means for to warn me concerning my danger. And I seem to him
to be a wilful sinner, thus contemning this saving grace. But yet,
when I was once took sick with that evil disease of the plague of
Egypt, Darrell stayed beside me for to tend me when all others fled
from the very sight of me; yea, he also read to me divers most
comfortable promises from his Bible, and in very deed saved my life.
Yet he hath his strange points, for he holds to certain of the
doctrines of that outlandish sect of the Fifth Monarchy Men, that will
have it we are all Jews.”
“Doubtless he is mad concerning one or two points,” says I. “In fine,
captain, I had rather that you had him always of your company than I.”
And so we, laughing, to dinner. But I was not yet done with this old
man Darrell. For we were beset, as it chanced, on this voyage of ours,
with many odious calms and contrary and baffling winds, so that we
were sore impeded in our going. Then on the occasion of one of these
calms the old man addressed himself to me once more.
“I fear lest I failed in my duty to you, sir, the t’other day,” says
he, “for ’twas in my heart to declare to you divers inconsistencies in
your walk and conversation,[81] and I refrained myself from so
doing.”
“You were better do it now, then,” said I, somewhat angry that he
asked no pardon for his presuming, and yet diverted by his words. He
looked upon me sadly enough.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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