And very quickly came that change to pass. By the time that the castaways on the great raft had once more headed their clumsy embarkation to the pursuit, they saw the more trim craft,—by her builders yclept the Catamaran—with her sails spread widely to the wind, gliding rapidly out of their reach, and “walking the water like a thing of life.”
They no longer continued the pursuit. They might have done so, but for the waves that now, swelling up around the raft, admonished them of a danger hitherto unknown. With the spray rushing over them, and the sea, at each fresh assault, threatening to engulf their ill-governed craft, they found sufficient employment for their remaining strength, in clinging to the timbers of their rude embarkation.
Chapter Eighty Eight.
A threatened Storm.
Thus, once more, were the Catamarans delivered from a terrible danger,—almost literally “from the jaws of death”; and once more, too, by what appeared a providential interference.
Ben Brace actually believed it so. It would have been difficult for anyone to have thought otherwise; but the moral mind of the sailor had of late undergone some very serious transformations; and the perils through which they had been passing,—with their repeated deliverances, all apparently due to some unseen hand,—had imbued him with a belief that the Almighty must be everywhere,—even in the midst of the illimitable ocean.
It was this faith that had sustained him through the many trials through which they had gone; and that, in the very latest and last,—when the ruffians upon the raft were fast closing upon the Catamaran,—had led him to give encouraging counsels to Snowball to keep on. It had encouraged him, in fine, to strike the boat-hook from the grasp of Le Gros,—which act had ended by putting their implacable enemy hors du combat, and conducting to their final deliverance.
It was this belief that still hindered the brave mariner,—now that the sea began to surge around them, and the spray to dash over the deck of their frail craft,—hindered him from giving way to a new despair; and from supposing that they had been only delivered from one danger to be overwhelmed by another.