The Love That Prevailed

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“That is going too far for me, sir,” said Hartwell. “I do not need to resort to anything more difficult to understand than vanity to enable me to understand how Pritchard has changed. The fellow's head has been turned—that's all.”

“That explanation doth not wholly satisfy me,” said Wesley. “I think that we have at least some proof that he was sensible of something abnormal in Nature, and this sensibility acting upon his brain disposed him to take a distorted view of the thing. His instinct in this matter may have been accurate; but his head was weak. He receives an impression of something strange, and forthwith he begins to talk of the Day of Judgment, and his foolish vanity induces him to think of himself as a prophet. The Preventive officer thinks that there hath been an earthquake. Now there can, I think, be no doubt that Pritchard was sensible of its coming; Pol-whele told you yesterday that he had predicted an earthquake in the sea, although it seemed that his illiteracy was accountable for this: and now there comes this remarkable tide—the highest tide that the memory of man has known.”

“You have plainly been giving the case of Pritchard much of your attention,” said Hartwell; “but I pray you to recall his account of the vision which he said came to him when he fell into that trance. 'Twas just the opposite to a high tide—'twas such an ebbing of the water as left bare the carcase of the East Indiaman that went ashore on the Dog's Teeth reef forty years ago.”

“True; but to my way of thinking it matters not whether 'twas a prodigious ebb or a prodigious flow that he talked of so long as he was feeling the impression of the unusual—of the extraordinary. Mind you, I am only throwing out a hint of a matter that may become, if approached in a proper spirit, a worthy subject for sober philosophical thought. God forbid that I should take it upon me to say at this moment that the power shown by that man is from the Enemy of mankind, albeit I have at times found myself thinking that it could come from no other source.”

“You are too lenient, I fear, Mr. Wesley. For myself, I believe simply that the man's head has been turned. Is't not certain that a devil enters into such men as are mad, and have we not proof that witches and warlocks have sometimes the perverted gift of prophecy, through the power of their master, the Old Devil?”

“I cannot gainsay it, my brother, and it is because of this you say, that I am greatly perplexed.”

They had been walking very slowly, for the heat of the day seemed to have increased, and they were both greatly exhausted. Before entering Mr. Hartwell's house they stood for a short time looking seaward. There, as before, the waves danced under the rays of the sun, although not a breath of air stirred between the sea and the sky. The canopy of the heaven was blue, but it suggested the blue of hard steel rather than that of the transparent sapphire or that of the soft mass of a bed of forget-me-nots, or of the canopy of clematis which clambered over the porch.

The sun that glared down from the supreme height was like to no other sun they had ever seen. The haze on its disc, to which the Preventive officer had drawn their attention an hour earlier, had been slowly growing in the meantime, until now it was equal to four diameters of the orb itself, and it was so permeated with the rays that it seemed part of the sun itself. There that mighty furnace seethed with intolerable fire, and so singular was the haze that one, glancing for a moment upward with hand on forehead, seemed to see the huge tongues of flame that burst forth now and again as they do beneath a copper cauldron on the furnace of the artificer.

But this was not all, for at a considerable distance from the molten mass, which had the sun for its core, there was a wide ring apparently of fire. Though dull as copper for the most part, yet at times there was a glow as of living and not merely reflected flame, at parts of the brazen circle, and flashes seemed to go from the sun to this cincture, conveying the impression of an enormous shield, having the sun as the central boss of shining brass, on which fiery darts were striking, flying off again to the brass binding of the targe.

“Another marvel!” said Wesley; “but I have seen the dike more than once before. Once 'twas on the Atlantic, and the master of our ship, who was a mariner of experience, told me that that outer circle was due to the sun shining through particles of moisture. Hold up a candle in the mist and you have the same thing.”