The lightning words flashed down out of the heavens on the self-damned below.
Dingy Joe flung up a ghastly face, screamed, and falling on his knees in the water, began to babble about his Redeemer.
Fat George took to his heels. Furiously he splashed along, yellow locks flopping. Kit could hear him snorting as he ran. All his life the fat man had been running away from God, the Great Enemy; and still He was there. Some day He would catch him—Fat George never doubted that … some day … but not while he had legs.
How should he know that as he ran, God ran with him?
The others huddled together like thunder-frightened cattle. Bandy Dick cocked a scared snook, while Red Beard was man enough to loose his musket at the zenith.
"Not yet, Governor!" he shouted with a roaring laugh—"not yet!"
Fools!—they were living in the Hell they feared. Their punishment was now. They had long been damned. While they lived God, the Avenger, would punish them inexorably. When they died, God, the merciful Saviour, would take them and make them clean.
Death, the death they feared and fled from, would be their Salvation, as it is every man's.
II
I will yet go forward.
Kit turned to a reconsideration of his enterprise.