Chapter XVII: On the Sea

It was splendid weather for a few days, and no one thought of being sea-sick, except Mrs. Hallam, who kept her room, partly because she thought she must, and partly because she could not shake off the feeling that Phineas was on board. She had read the few names on the passenger-list, but his was not among them, nor did she expect to find it, as he had sailed two weeks before. Still, she would neither go on deck nor into the dining-saloon, and without being really ill, kept her berth and was waited upon by Eloïse, who was accompanying her home. Louie, who was still delicate and who always shrank from cold, stayed mostly in the salon. But the briny, bracing sea air suited Bertha, and for several hours each day she walked the deck with Rex, whose arm was sometimes thrown around her when the ship gave a great lurch, or when on turning a corner they met the wind full in their faces. Then there were the moonlight nights, when the air was full of frost and the waves were like burnished silver, and in her sealskin coat and cap, which Louie had bought for her in Geneva, Bertha was never tired of walking and never thought of the cold, for, if the exercise had not kept her warm, the light which shone upon her from Rex’s eyes when she met their gaze would have done so. Perhaps he looked the same at Louie,—very likely he did,—but for the present he was hers alone, and she was supremely happy while the fine, warm weather lasted and with it the companionship on deck. But suddenly there came a change.

Along the western coast of the Atlantic a wild storm had been raging, and when it subsided there it swept towards the east, gathering force as it went, and, joined by the angry winds from every point of the compass, it was almost a cyclone when it reached the Teutonic. But the great ship met it bravely, mounting wave after wave like a feather, then plunging down into the green depths below, then rising again and shaking off the water as if the boiling sea were a mere plaything and the storm gotten up for its pastime. The passengers, who were told that there was no real danger, kept up their courage while the day lasted, but when the night came on and the darkness grew deeper in the salon, where nearly all were assembled, many a face grew white with fear as they listened to the howling of the wind and the roaring of the sea, while wave after wave struck the ship, which sometimes seemed to stand still, and then, trembling in every joint, rose up to meet the angry waves which beat upon it with such tremendous force.

Early in the day Louie had taken to her bed, where she lay sobbing bitterly, while Bertha tried to comfort her. As the darkness was increasing and the noise overhead grew more and more deafening, Rex brought his aunt to the salon, where, like many of the others, she sat down upon the floor, clinging to one of the chairs for support. Then he went to Louie and asked if he should not take her there too.

“No, no! oh, no!” she moaned. “I’d rather die here, if you will stay with me.”

Just then a roll of the ship sent her out upon the floor, where every movable thing in the room had gone before her. After that she made no further resistance, but suffered Bertha to wrap her waterproof around her, and was then carried by Rex and deposited upon one end of a table, where she lay, too much frightened to move, with Rex supporting her on one side and Bertha on the other. And still the storm raged on, and the white faces grew whiter as the question was asked, “What will the end be?” In every heart there was a prayer, and Rex’s mind went back to that night at the Homestead and the prayers for those in peril on the deep. Were they praying now, and would their prayers avail, or would the sad news go to them that their loved one was lying far down in the depths of the sea?

“Oh, if I could save her!” he thought, moving his hand along upon the table until it touched and held hers in a firm clasp which seemed to say, “For life or death you are mine.”

Just then Louie began to shiver, and moaned that she was cold.

“Wait a minute, darling,” Bertha said, “and I will bring you a blanket from our state-room, if I can get there.”

This was no easy task, for the ship was plunging fearfully, and always at an angle which made walking difficult. Twice Bertha fell upon her knees, and once struck her head against the side of the passage, but she reached the room at last, and, securing the blanket, was turning to retrace her steps, when a wave heavier than any which had preceded it struck the vessel, which reeled with what one of the sailors called a double X, pitching and rolling sidewise and endwise and cornerwise all at once. To stand was impossible, and with a cry Bertha fell forward into the arms of Rex Hallam.

“Rex!” she said, involuntarily, and “Bertha!” he replied, showering kisses upon her face, down which the tears were running like rain.

She had been gone so long that he had become alarmed at her absence, and with great difficulty had made his way to the state-room, which he reached in time to save her from a heavy fall. Both were thrown upon the lounge under the window, where they sat for a moment, breathless and forgetful of their danger, Bertha was the first to speak, saying she must go to Louie, but Rex held her fast, and, steadying himself as best he could, drew her face close to his, and said, “This is not a time for love-making, but I may never have another chance, and, if we must die, death will be robbed of half its terrors if you are with me, my darling, my queen, whom I believe I have loved ever since I saw your photograph and thought it was poor Rose Arabella Jefferson.”

He could not repress a smile at the remembrance of that scion of the Jeffersons, but Bertha did not see it. Her head was lying upon his breast, and he was holding to the side of the door to keep from being thrown upon the floor as he urged his suit and then waited for her answer. Against the windows and the dead-lights the waves were dashing furiously, while overhead was a roar like heavy cannonading, mingled with the hoarse shouts of voices calling through the storm. But Rex heard Bertha’s answer, and at the peril of his limbs folded her in his arms and said, “Now we live or die together; and I think that we shall live.”

Naturally they forgot the blanket and everything else as they groped their way back to the door of the salon, where Rex stopped suddenly at the sound of a voice heard distinctly enough for him to know that some one was praying loudly and earnestly, and to know, too, who it was whose clear, nasal tones could be heard above the din without.

“Phineas Jones!” he exclaimed. “Great Cæsar! how came he here?” And he struggled in with Bertha to get nearer to him.

Phineas had been very ill in Liverpool, and when the Germanic left he was still in bed, and was obliged to wait two weeks longer, when he took passage on the same ship with Mrs. Hallam. Even then he was so weak that he did not make up his mind to go until an hour before the ship sailed. As there were few passengers, he had no difficulty in securing a berth, where during the first days of the voyage he lay horribly sea-sick and did not know who were on board. He had been too late for his name to be included in the passenger-list, and it was not until the day of the storm that he learned that Mrs. Hallam and Rex and Bertha were on the ship. To find them at once was his first impulse, but when the cyclone struck the boat it struck him, too, with a fresh attack of sea-sickness, from which he did not rally until night, when he would not be longer restrained. Something told him, he said, that Lucy Ann needed him,—in fact, that they all needed him in the cabin, and he was going there. And he went, nearly breaking his neck. Entering the salon on his hands and knees, he made his way to the end of the table on which Louie lay, and near which Mrs. Hallam was clinging desperately to a chair as she crouched upon the floor. It was at this moment that the double X which had sent Bertha into Rex’s arms struck the ship, eliciting shrieks of terror from the passengers, who felt that the end had come. Steadying himself against a corner of the table, Phineas called out, in a loud, penetrating voice:

“Silence! This is no time to scream and cry. It is action you want. Pray to be delivered, as Jonah did. The captain and crew are doing their level best on deck. Let us do ours here, and don’t you worry. We shall be heard. The Master who stilled the storm on Galilee is in this boat, and not asleep, either, in the hindermost part. If He was, no human could get to Him, with the ship nearly bottom side up. He is in our midst. I know it, I feel it; and you who are too scart to pray, and you who don’t know how, listen to me. Let us pray.”

The effect was electric, and every head was bowed as Phineas began the most remarkable prayer which was ever offered on shipboard. He was in deadly earnest, and, fired with the fervor and eloquence which made him so noted as a class-leader, he informed the Lord of the condition they were in and instructed Him how to improve it. Galilee, he said, was nothing to the Atlantic when on a tear as it was now, but the voice which had quieted the waters of Tiberias could stop this uproar. He presumed some of them ought to be drowned, he said, but they didn’t want to be, and were going to do better. Then he confessed every possible sin which might have been committed by the passengers, who, according to his statement, were about the wickedest lot, take them as a whole, that ever crossed the ocean. There were exceptions, of course. There were near and dear friends of his, and one blood kin, on board, for whom he especially asked aid. He had not looked upon the face of his kinswoman for years, but he had never forgotten the sweet counsel they took together when children in Sturbridge, and he would have her saved anyway. Like himself, she was old and stricken in years, but——

“Horrible!” came in muffled tones from something at his feet, and, looking down, he saw the bundle of shawls, which, in its excitement, had loosened its hold on the chair and was rolling down the inclined plane towards the centre of the room.

Reaching out his long arm, he pulled it back, and, putting his foot against it, went on with what was now a prayer of thanksgiving. Those who have been in a storm at sea like the one I am describing, will remember how quick they were to detect a change for the better, as the blows upon the ship became less frequent and heavy and the noise overhead began to subside.

Phineas was the first to notice it, and, with his foot still firmly planted against the struggling bundle to keep it in place, he exclaimed, in a voice which was almost a shriek:

“We are saved! We are saved! Don’t you feel it? Don’t you hear it?”

They did hear it and feel it, and with glad hearts responded to the words of thanksgiving which Phineas poured forth, saying the answer to his prayer had come sooner than he expected, and acknowledging that his faith had been weak as water. Then he promised a forsaking of their sins, and a life more consistent with the doctrine they professed, for them all, adapting himself as nearly as he could to the forms of worship familiar to the different denominations he knew must be assembled there. For the Presbyterians there was a mention made of foreordination and the Westminster Catechism, for the Baptists, immersion, for the Methodists, sanctification, for the Roman Catholics, the Blessed Virgin; but he forgot the Episcopalians, until, remembering, with a start, Rex and Lucy Ann, he wound up with:

“From pride, vainglory and hypocrisy, good Lord deliver us. Amen.”

The simple earnestness of the man so impressed his hearers that no one thought of smiling at his ludicrous language, and when the danger was really over and they could stand upon their feet, they crowded around him as if he had been their deliverer from deadly peril, while Rex introduced him as his particular friend. This stamped him as somebody, and he at once became a sort of lion. We are all more or less susceptible to flattery, and Phineas was not an exception; he received the attentions with a very satisfied air, thinking to himself that if his recent prayers had so impressed them, what would they say if they could hear him when fully under way at a camp-meeting?

“Where’s your aunt?” he asked Rex, suddenly, while Rex looked round for her, but could not find her.

More dead than alive, Mrs. Hallam had clung to the chair in momentary expectation of going down, never to rise again, and in that awful hour it seemed to her that everything connected with her life had passed before her. The old, yellow house, the grandmother to whom she had not always been kind, the early friends of whom she had been ashamed, the husband she had loved, but whom she had tried so often, all stood out so vividly that it seemed as if she could touch them.

“Everything bad,—nothing good. May God forgive it all!” she whispered more than once, as she lay waiting for the end and shuddering as she thought of the dark, cold waters so soon to engulf her.

In this state of mind she became conscious that some one was standing so close to her that his boots held down a portion of her dress, but she did not mind it, for at that moment Phineas began his prayer, to which she listened intently. She knew it was an illiterate man, that his boots were coarse, that his clothes were saturated with an odor of cheap tobacco, and that he belonged to a class which she despised because she had once been of it. But as he prayed she felt, as she had never felt before, the Presence he said was there with him, and thought nothing of his class, or his tobacco, or his boots. He was a saint, until he spoke of Sturbridge and his blood kin who was old and stricken in years. Then she knew who the saint was, and as soon as it was possible to do so she escaped to her state-room, where Rex found her in a state of great nervous excitement. She could not and would not see Phineas that night, she said. Possibly she might be equal to it in the morning. With that message Phineas, who was hovering around her door, was obliged to be content, but before he retired, every one with whom he talked knew that Mrs. Hallam was his cousin Lucy Ann, whom he used to know in Sturbridge when she was a girl.