Therefore we are prepared for the awful, the mysterious, and even the terrible. Nothing in the universal process can disturb or confound us. If a thing appears to be evil it is wisdom which is at fault. If an event seems to be cruel it is our love which is blind. We look upon the chances and changes of human experience even as we gaze at night upon the movements of the heavenly spheres; we would as little think of questioning the beneficence of the one as of the other.
Come sorrow or joy, failure or success, death or life—it is all the same. We trust God, and therefore we trust life, which is simply the thing that God is doing. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!” Yea, it is only when God seems to slay us that we can trust in Him, for trust begins only when knowledge fails; just as the stars shine only when the sun is gone!
HE IS THE PILOT IN A FOG
CHAPTER I
The Empress of Ireland Sails to Her Doom
ANOTHER TOLL OF THE SEA—THE EMPRESS SAILS FROM QUEBEC—THE HOLIDAY HUMOR OF THE PASSENGERS—CAPTAIN KENDALL WARNED OF FOGS—THE STORSTAD SIGHTED—FOG SUDDENLY SETTLES—THE STORSTAD CRASHES INTO THE EMPRESS—INJURY ON STARBOARD SIDE—A MORTAL BLOW—WIRELESS CALLS FOR HELP—HUNDREDS DROWN IN CABIN—NO TIME TO ROUSE PASSENGERS—LIFE-BOATS LAUNCHED IN RECORD TIME—THE EMPRESS GOES DOWN
ONCE again an appalling sea disaster comes to remind us that no precautions man can take will make him immune against the forces that nature, when she so wills, can assemble against him. It is a truism to say that the most recent marine disaster was preventable. An accident suggests the idea of preventability. The Empress of Ireland was equipped with modern appliances for safety. She had longitudinal and transverse water-tight steel bulkheads and the submarine signaling and wireless apparatus. She was being navigated with all the precaution and care which the dangers of the course and the atmospheric conditions demanded. The Storstad had been sighted and signaled. The Empress was at a standstill, or slowly moving backward in response to a hasty reversal of the engines. Nothing apparently that those responsible for the lives of their passengers could do to safeguard those lives was left undone, and yet hundreds of people perished miserably.