The Love That Prevailed

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“Was it not the same demons that dragged the ship to destruction on the reef, and is't not within their province to know all that happens below the surface of the sea?” said the carrier.

“Doubtless,” said the smith. “But I find it hard to think of so moderately foolish a fellow as Dick Pritchard being hand in glove with a fiend of any sort, and not profiting more by the traffic—as to his secular circumstances, I should say.”

“And I find it hard to think of him as urging men to repent, if he be an ally of the Evil One,” said Hartwell.

“This is not a case in which the wisdom of man can show itself to be other than foolishness,” said Wesley. “But I am now moved to speak to the people who have come hither to see the wonder. Let us hasten onward to the highest ground. My heart is full.”

He went on with his friends to a short spur of the cliff about twenty feet above the shingle where groups of men and women were straying; most of them had been down to the wreck and nearly all were engaged in discussing its marvellous appearance. Some of the elder men were recalling for the benefit of the younger the circumstances of the loss of the great East Indiaman, and the affluence that had come to a good many houses in the Port, when the cargo began to be washed ashore before the arrival of the Preventive men and the soldiery from Falmouth.

But while the larger proportion of the people were engaged in discussing, without any sense of awe, the two abnormal tides and the story of the wreck, there were numbers who were clearly terror-stricken at the marvels and at the prospect of the morrow. A few women were clinging together and moaning without cessation, a girl or two wept aloud, a few shrieked hysterically, and one began to laugh and gibber, pointing monkey hands in the direction of the wreck. But further on half a dozen young men and maidens were engaged in a boisterous and an almost shocking game preserved in Cornwall and some parts of Wales through the ages that had elapsed since it was practised by a by-gone race of semi-savages. They went through it now in the most abandoned and barbaric way, dancing like Bacchanalians in a ring, with shouts and wild laughter.

John Wesley, who knew what it was to be human, had no difficulty in perceiving that these wretched people were endeavouring in such excesses to conceal the terror they felt, and he was not surprised to find a number of intoxicated men clinging together and singing wildly in the broad moorland space that lay on the landward side of the cliffs.

“This is the work of Pritchard the water-finder, and will you say that 'tis not of the Devil?” cried Jake Pullsford.

“Poor wretches! Oh, my poor brothers and sisters!” cried Wesley. “Our aim should be to soothe them, not to denounce them. Never have they been subjected to such a strain as that which has been put upon them. I can understand their excesses. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die'—that is the cry which comes from all hearts that have not been regenerated.'Tis the cry of the old Paganism which once ruled the world, before the sweet calm of Christianity brought men from earth to heaven. I will speak to them.”

He had reached the high ground with his friends. There was a sudden spur on the range of low cliffs just where the people were most numerous. They had come from all quarters to witness the wonders of this lurid eve, and, as was the case at Wesley's preaching, everyone was asking of everyone else how so large an assembly could be brought together in a neighbourhood that was certainly not densely populated. On each side of him and on the beach below there were crowds, and on every face the crimson of the sinking sun flamed. He went out to the furthest point of the cliff-spur and stood there silent, with uplifted arms.