And Old Rogers spoke thus:—
“Oncet upon a time, I made a voyage in a merchant barque. We were becalmed in the South Seas. And weary work it wur, a doin’ of nothin’ from day to day. But when the water began to come up thick from the bottom of the water-casks, it was wearier a deal. Then a thick fog came on, as white as snow a’most, and we couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead or on any side of us. But the fog didn’t keep the heat off; it only made it worse, and the water was fast going done. The short allowance grew shorter and shorter, and the men, some of them, were half-mad with thirst, and began to look bad at one another. I kept up my heart by looking ahead inside me. For days and days the fog hung about us as if the air had been made o’ flocks o’ wool. The captain took to his berth, and several of the crew to their hammocks, for it was just as hot on deck as anywhere else. The mate lay on a sparesail on the quarter-deck, groaning. I had a strong suspicion that the schooner was drifting, and hove the lead again and again, but could find no bottom. Some of the men got hold of the spirits, and THAT didn’t quench their thirst. It drove them clean mad. I had to knock one of them down myself with a capstan bar, for he ran at the mate with his knife. At last I began to lose all hope. And still I was sure the schooner was slowly drifting. My head was like to burst, and my tongue was like a lump of holystone in my mouth. Well, one morning, I had just, as I thought, lain down on the deck to breathe my last, hoping I should die before I went quite mad with thirst, when all at once the fog lifted, like the foot of a sail. I sprung to my feet. There was the blue sky overhead; but the terrible burning sun was there. A moment more and a light air blew on my cheek, and, turning my face to it as if it had been the very breath of God, there was an island within half a mile, and I saw the shine of water on the face of a rock on the shore. I cried out, ‘Land on the weather-quarter! Water in sight!’ In a moment more a boat was lowered, and in a few minutes the boat’s crew, of which I was one, were lying, clothes and all, in a little stream that came down from the hills above.—There, Mr Walton! that’s what I wanted to say to you.”
This is as near the story of my old friend as my limited knowledge of sea affairs allows me to report it.
“I understand you quite, Old Rogers, and I thank you heartily,” I said.
“No doubt,” resumed he, “King Solomon was quite right, as he always was, I suppose, in what he SAID, for his wisdom mun ha’ laid mostly in the tongue—right, I say, when he said, ‘Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth;’ but I can’t help thinking there’s another side to it. I think it would be as good advice to a man on the other tack, whose boasting lay far to windward, and he close on a lee-shore wi’ breakers—it wouldn’t be amiss to say to him, ‘Don’t strike your colours to the morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’ There’s just as many good days as bad ones; as much fair weather as foul in the days to come. And if a man keeps up heart, he’s all the better for that, and none the worse when the evil day does come. But, God forgive me! I’m talking like a heathen. As if there was any chance about what the days would bring forth. No, my lad,” said the old sailor, assuming the dignity of his superior years under the inspiration of the truth, “boast nor trust nor hope in the morrow. Boast and trust and hope in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him, who is the health of thy countenance and thy God.”
I could but hold out my hand. I had nothing to say. For he had spoken to me as an angel of God.
The old man was silent for some moments: his emotion needed time to still itself again. Nor did he return to the subject. He held out his hand once more, saying—
“Good day, sir. I must go back to my work.”
“I will go back with you,” I returned.
And so we walked back side by side to the village, but not a word did we speak the one to the other, till we shook hands and parted upon the bridge, where we had first met. Old Rogers went to his work, and I lingered upon the bridge. I leaned upon the low parapet, and looked up the stream as far as the mists creeping about the banks, and hovering in thinnest veils over the surface of the water, would permit. Then I turned and looked down the river crawling on to the sweep it made out of sight just where Mr Brownrigg’s farm began to come down to its banks. Then I looked to the left, and there stood my old church, as quiet in the dreary day, though not so bright, as in the sunshine: even the graves themselves must look yet more “solemn sad” in a wintry day like this, than they look when the sunlight that infolds them proclaims that God is not the God of the dead but of the living. One of the great battles that we have to fight in this world—for twenty great battles have to be fought all at once and in one—is the battle with appearances. I turned me to the right, and there once more I saw, as on that first afternoon, the weathercock that watched the winds over the stables at Oldcastle Hall. It had caught just one glimpse of the sun through some rent in the vapours, and flung it across to me, ere it vanished again amid the general dinginess of the hour.