"You blaspheme! Now I know who you are! The apple does not fall far from the tree! Now I understand the whole craft of Satan. You build the Lord a house for a brothel as an offering to a harlot! You play wizard and magician to get people to fall down and worship the denier. But the Lord says: 'Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolators, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie!'"
The last words he had thrown out with an incredible volubility and exaltation, without seeking for them elsewhere than on his lips, and just as though he feared a crushing answer which would weaken their impression, he turned his back and went down to his boat.
Meantime the mist had lifted, and the sea spread its pure blue water soothingly and acquittingly.
The commissioner remained awhile in his rocky chair, and meditated on the subjection of the soul under the same laws that govern the physical forces. The wind tore up a wave down on Esthonia; that wave chased another, and the last which transmitted the motion to the Swedish coast, removed a small pebble, which had afforded support to a rock; and after a man's age the results would be shown in the tumbling down of the rock; and this would be followed by a new undermining of the uncovered rock which now lay exposed.
His brain twenty-five years ago had thrown out what was to him a meaningless word, that word had penetrated an ear and put a brain into such a strong agitation that it still vibrated after having given direction to the whole life of a human being. And who knows, if this innervation current had not again been reënforced by contact and friction, so that it once more with invigorated force would unload itself and bring other counter forces into action, producing disturbances and destruction in the lives of others!
Now when the preacher's boat sped into sight round the point, bearing down to East Skerry, the commissioner got such a sure feeling that there sat a foe who was marching down to his forts, that he arose and went to his boat, to go home and place himself on the defensive.
When he was well seated in the boat and calmed by the gentle rocking of the waves, he was seized by a strong desire to still tarry a few hours on the sea in perfect solitude and let the last disquieting impressions blow away.
Why should he even fear this man's influence on his betrothed, as she would still show herself unsuited to a union for life, if she sunk back to a level with the uneducated. But nevertheless it grieved him that there existed this fear. It reminded of the behavior of those men, who were living in the fear of losses and which is stamped with the name jealousy. Was it the feeling of an inability to keep, which betrayed a frailness in him? Or was it not rather a frailness in her not to be able to retain a hold, when the balloon should ascend, leaving the sheet anchor religion, and throwing away the sacks of ballast, the feelings? Certainly the latter would have been the better way, notwithstanding they had got a certain authority with those, who had nothing to lose.
He now tacked and lay oft the skerry to south-east, a point from which he had not seen his prison before. Highest up on the hill he saw the skeleton of the unfinished chapel with its staging, but he did not see any laborers, although the morning was far advanced. He did not even notice any boats out fishing. There was on the whole a great stillness on the skerry, and no people were to be seen even by the custom house cottage or the pilots' outlook. He turned and stood on another tack to sail round the skerry. But when he came outside of the same, the sea became higher and he gained only a little by the tack, so it took a whole hour before he could scud down to the harbor. Now he saw the cottage where the ladles lived, and as soon as he had sped by the point of the harbor, he observed all the inhabitants of the island gathered round the house, on the porch of which the preacher stood bare-headed, speaking.