The Lord has saved His faithful ones from a terrible death, yet He has cast them upon the immeasurable deep, and abandoned them to fresh dangers.
The night passed away, but the sky was still covered with wild, hurrying clouds which seemed to be fighting among themselves so that their blood flowed down in streams. And nowhere was the sun to be seen, and the horizon had vanished in drifting clouds and floating vapours—and so they fared for four days. The tempest is never weary.
The ship was already a wreck, the masts were broken to pieces, the glistening dragons on the prow, which had made such a brave show a few days before, had been swept away by the waves; everything superfluous had already been cast overboard, and yet it was as much as they could do to keep the ship from sinking.
As now the fourth day was already closing in storm and stress, the eldest of the mariners stepped up to Bar Noemi, took him aside, and said—
"Dost thou not pray to Jehovah every day, Bar Noemi?"
"Every hour and with all my might!"
"In the stern of thy ship stands the Ark of thy Covenant before which thou dost kneel constantly. What does it contain? Jehovah dwells therein, does He not?"
"It contains the Commandments of the Lord engraved on stone, after the pattern of the tables of Jerusalem."
"Then thou prayest to Jehovah? It is well! But dost thou not know that at the self-same time thy crew in the hold of the ship bewail Thammus, kneeling beside the golden serpent which they have concealed there. Thus, either two Divinities, one of whom would save, the other destroy us, are striving above our heads for the mastery while we perish; or, there is but one God, even Jehovah, as thou sayest, who prolongs our days indeed out of compassion for thee—but who, in His wrath at the wickedness of these men, will not deliver us from the storm. Look now, this do! When, at night, the sound of wailing reaches thee through the deck, know that they are worshipping their idol, and either throw the Ark of the Covenant or the golden serpent into the sea, that at least one God may befriend us."
At these words Bar Noemi was very wrath, and did as the old mariner had counselled. For when at night time he heard the mysterious wailing below the deck, he went quickly down into the hold and there found his sailors on their knees, smiting their breasts and cutting their naked limbs with sharp knives, and in the midst stood a golden serpent, wound round a column, whose large eyes, made of carbuncle stones, gleamed brightly through the gloom.