“I did not know.... Danger, again?”
“Yes. He thinks he has done no harm, then is alarmed, penitent, protests that he will not—and then it’s all done again.... Poor human weakness!”
“And if—?”
“We will not look at that now,” said Aderhold. “It would unroll itself soon enough.—Joan, Joan! I would that you were safe!”
“I am safe. I would that you—”
“I will match your ‘I am safe.’ I, too, am safe. Nothing here can quench the eternal, flowing life! But until we have lifted this level and built more highly we shall feel its pains ... and feel them for one another. And now I ache for your danger.”
The east was carmine, the sea from purple turned carmine—carmine eastward from the Silver Queen to the horizon; elsewhere a burnished play of greens and blues, a vast plain, still, still! It flowed around and away to the burning horizon, and not a sail and not a breath, and no sound in the cordage overhead. The deepening light flowed between Joan and Aderhold, and in it, suddenly, the body of each was beautiful in the other’s eyes.... The sun came up, a red-gold ball. Neither man nor woman had spoken, and now, suddenly, too, with the full dayspring, the ship was astir, men were upon the decks. Gilbert Aderhold, Joan Heron stepped back into the violet shadow; here were Giles and John Allen.
Up to these now came Master Evans, the minister bound for Jamestown, a stout, gentle-faced man in a sad-coloured suit. “Fast as though the ship were in the stocks!” he said. “But if the Lord is gracious, we will pray her free! Breakfast done, we will gather together and make hearty supplication.” He looked across to the sun, mailed now in diamond, mounting blinding and fierce. The sweet coolness of the earlier hour was gone; wave on wave came heat, heat, heat! Master Evans clasped more closely the Bible in his hand. “Thou sun whom for Israel’s sake the Lord halted in thy course and held thee nailed fast above Gibeon! Dost thou think if He chooses now to veil thy face with cloud and to blow thy rays aside, thou canst prevent? And thou hot and moveless air, if He choose to drive thee against the stern of this ship and into the hollow of these sails, wilt thou make objection? Nay, verily! And why should He not choose? Here upon this ship are not infidels and heathen, but his own servants and sheep! Wherefore we will kneel and beseech Him, and perchance a miracle may fall like manna.”
He looked smilingly about him, then, pressing his Bible closely, went on to other emigrants.... Later in the morning all upon the Silver Queen were drawn together to make petition for a prospering wind. All save the sick were there. Giles and John Allen stood with the others, knelt with the others. “Have we not a chronicle of Thy deeds,” prayed Master Evans. “Didst Thou not make a dry road through an ocean for a chosen people? Didst Thou not, at the Tower of Babel, in one hour shake one language into all the tongues that are heard upon the earth? Didst Thou not enable Noah to bring into the Ark in pairs all the beasts of this whole earth? Didst Thou not turn a woman into a pillar of salt, and give powers of speech to an ass, and preserve three men unsinged in a fiery furnace? Didst Thou not direct the dew on the one night to moisten only the fleece of Gideon and not any of the earth besides, and on the next night to glisten over the face of the earth, but to leave the fleece unmoistened? And are not we thy servants even as were Gideon and Lot and Noah?...”