But when I saw the height of the water, as it rushed on us up the sloping side of the mound, I cried out in my turn, “Down, Joe! Down on your face, and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!”
They obeyed. We threw ourselves across the breakwater, with our heads to the coming foe, and I grasped my stick close to the stones with all the power of a hand that was then strong. Over us burst the mighty wave, floating us up from the stones where we lay. But we held on, the wave passed, and we sprung gasping to our feet.
“Now, now!” cried Joe and I together, and, heavy as we were, with the water pouring from us, we flew across the remainder of the heap, and arrived, panting and safe, at the other end, ere one wave more had swept the surface. The moment we were in safety we turned and looked back over the danger we had traversed. It was to see a huge billow sweep the breakwater from end to end. We looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
“I believe, sir,” said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, “if you hadn’t taken the command at that moment we should all have been lost.”
“It seems likely enough, when I look back on it. For one thing, I was not sure that my stick would stand, so I thought I had better grasp it low down.”
“We were awfully near death,” said Joe.
“Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don’t go all as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as foresight—believe me, Joe. It is very absurd to trust God for the future, and not trust him for the present. The man who is not anxious is the man most likely to do the right thing. He is cool and collected and ready. Our Lord therefore told his disciples that when they should be brought before kings and rulers, they were to take no thought what answer they should make, for it would be given them when the time came.”
We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my companions spoke.
“You have escaped one death together,” I said at length: “dare another.”
Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the parsonage, I said, “Now, Joe, you must go in and get to bed at once. I will take Agnes home. You can trust me not to say anything against you?”