Great Britain -- History -- James I, 1603-1625 -- Fiction; Witchcraft -- Fiction
The east was carmine, the sea from purple turned carmine—carmine
eastward from the Silver Queen to the horizon; elsewhere a burnished
play of greens and blues, a vast plain, still, still! It flowed around
and away to the burning horizon, and not a sail and not a breath, and
no sound in the cordage overhead. The deepening light flowed between
Joan and Aderhold, and in it, suddenly, the body of each was beautiful
in the other’s eyes.... The sun came up, a red-gold ball. Neither man
nor woman had spoken, and now, suddenly, too, with the full dayspring,
the ship was astir, men were upon the decks. Gilbert Aderhold, Joan
Heron stepped back into the violet shadow; here were Giles and John
Allen.
Up to these now came Master Evans, the minister bound for Jamestown,
a stout, gentle-faced man in a sad-coloured suit. “Fast as though
the ship were in the stocks!” he said. “But if the Lord is gracious,
we will pray her free! Breakfast done, we will gather together and
make hearty supplication.” He looked across to the sun, mailed now
in diamond, mounting blinding and fierce. The sweet coolness of the
earlier hour was gone; wave on wave came heat, heat, heat! Master
Evans clasped more closely the Bible in his hand. “Thou sun whom for
Israel’s sake the Lord halted in thy course and held thee nailed fast
above Gibeon! Dost thou think if He chooses now to veil thy face with
cloud and to blow thy rays aside, thou canst prevent? And thou hot and
moveless air, if He choose to drive thee against the stern of this
ship and into the hollow of these sails, wilt thou make objection?
Nay, verily! And why should He not choose? Here upon this ship are not
infidels and heathen, but his own servants and sheep! Wherefore we will
kneel and beseech Him, and perchance a miracle may fall like manna.”
He looked smilingly about him, then, pressing his Bible closely, went
on to other emigrants.... Later in the morning all upon the Silver
Queen were drawn together to make petition for a prospering wind. All
save the sick were there. Giles and John Allen stood with the others,
knelt with the others. “Have we not a chronicle of Thy deeds,” prayed
Master Evans. “Didst Thou not make a dry road through an ocean for a
chosen people? Didst Thou not, at the Tower of Babel, in one hour shake
one language into all the tongues that are heard upon the earth? Didst
Thou not enable Noah to bring into the Ark in pairs all the beasts of
this whole earth? Didst Thou not turn a woman into a pillar of salt,
and give powers of speech to an ass, and preserve three men unsinged
in a fiery furnace? Didst Thou not direct the dew on the one night to
moisten only the fleece of Gideon and not any of the earth besides, and
on the next night to glisten over the face of the earth, but to leave
the fleece unmoistened? And are not we thy servants even as were Gideon
and Lot and Noah?...”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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