About two months before this scene in Eli's home, the natives of a little' maritime place between Naples and Rome might be seen flocking to the sea beach, with eyes cast seaward at a ship, that laboured against a stiff gale blowing dead on the shore.
At times she seemed likely to weather the danger, and then the spectators congratulated her aloud: at others the wind and sea drove her visibly nearer, and the lookers-on were not without a secret satisfaction they would not have owned even to themselves.
Non quia vexari quemquam est jucunda voluptas Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.
And the poor ship, though not scientifically built for sailing, was admirably constructed for going ashore, with her extravagant poop that caught the wind, and her lines like a cocked hat reversed.To those on the beach that battered labouring frame of wood seemed alive, and struggling against death with a panting heart.But could they have been transferred to her deck they would have seen she had not one beating heart but many, and not one nature but a score were coming out clear in that fearful hour.
The mariners stumbled wildly about the deck, handling the ropes as each thought fit, and cursing and praying alternately.
The passengers were huddled together round the mast, some sitting, some kneeling, some lying prostrate, and grasping the bulwarks as the vessel rolled and pitched in the mighty waves.One comely young man, whose ashy cheek, but compressed lips, showed how hard terror was battling in him with self-respect, stood a little apart, holding tight by a shroud, and wincing at each sea.It was the ill-fated Gerard.Meantime prayers and vows rose from the trembling throng amid-ships, and to hear them, it seemed there were almost as many gods about as men and women.The sailors, indeed, relied on a single goddess.They varied her titles only, calling on her as "Queen of Heaven," "Star of the Sea," "Mistress of the World," "Haven of Safety." But among the landsmen Polytheism raged.Even those who by some strange chance hit on the same divinity did not hit on the same edition of that divinity.An English merchant vowed a heap of gold to our lady of Walsingham.
But a Genoese merchant vowed a silver collar of four pounds to our lady of Loretto; and a Tuscan noble promised ten pounds of wax lights to our lady of Ravenna; and with a similar rage for diversity they pledged themselves, not on the true Cross, but on the true Cross in this, that, or the other modern city.
Suddenly a more powerful gust than usual catching the sail at a disadvantage, the rotten shrouds gave way, and the sail was torn out with a loud crack, and went down the wind smaller and smaller, blacker and blacker, and fluttered into the sea, half a mile off, like a sheet of paper, and ere the helmsman could put the ship's head before the wind, a wave caught her on the quarter and drenched the poor wretches to the bone, and gave them a foretaste of chill death.Then one vowed aloud to turn Carthusian monk, if St.Thomas would save him.Another would go a pilgrim to Compostella, bareheaded, barefooted, with nothing but a coat of mail on his naked skin, if St.James would save him.Others invoked Thomas, Dominic, Denys, and above all, Catherine of Sienna.
Two petty Neapolitan traders stood shivering.
One shouted at the top of his voice, "I vow to St.Christopher at Paris a waxen image of his own weight, if I win safe to land."On this the other nudged him, and said, "Brother, brother, take heed what you vow.Why, if you sell all you have in the world by public auction, 'twill not buy his weight in wax.""Hold your tongue, you fool," said the vociferator.Then in a whisper:
"Think ye I am in earnest? Let me but win safe to land, I'll not give him a rush dip."Others lay flat and prayed to the sea.
"Oh, most merciful sea! oh, sea most generous! oh! bountiful sea!
oh, beautiful sea! be gentle, be kind, preserve us in this hour of peril."And others wailed and moaned in mere animal terror each time the ill-fated ship rolled or pitched more terribly than usual; and she was now a mere plaything in the arms of the tremendous waves.
A Roman woman of the humbler class sat with her child at her half-bared breast, silent amid that wailing throng: her cheek ashy pale; her eye calm; and her lips moved at times in silent prayer, but she neither wept, nor lamented, nor bargained with the gods.
Whenever the ship seemed really gone under their feet, and bearded men squeaked, she kissed her child; but that was all.And so she sat patient, and suckled him in death's jaws; for why should he lose any joy she could give him; moribundo? Ay, there I do believe, sat Antiquity among those mediaevals.Sixteen hundred years had not tainted the old Roman blood in her veins; and the instinct of a race she had perhaps scarce heard of taught her to die with decent dignity.
A gigantic friar stood on the poop with feet apart, like the Colossus of Rhodes, not so much defying, as ignoring, the peril that surrounded him.He recited verses from the Canticles with a loud unwavering voice; and invited the passengers to confess to him.Some did so on their knees, and he heard them and laid his hands on them, and absolved them as if he had been in a snug sacristy, instead of a perishing ship.Gerard got nearer and nearer to him, by the instinct that takes the wavering to the side of the impregnable.And in truth, the courage of heroes facing fleshly odds might have paled by the side of that gigantic friar, and his still more gigantic composure.Thus, even here, two were found who maintained the dignity of our race: a woman, tender, yet heroic, and a monk steeled by religion against mortal fears.
And now, the sail being gone, the sailors cut down the useless mast a foot above the board, and it fell with its remaining hamper over the ship's side.This seemed to relieve her a little.