Bar Noemi approached the idol and dashed his sword against its head, whereupon it broke into a thousand splinters which scattered in all directions.
"Behold now!" cried Bar Noemi, "how that magian lied who told you that this was a god, and how that goldsmith lied who said it was of gold! It was only so much gilded glass. He who wrought the thing was right in supposing that if you could take it for a god, it might also pass for gold!"
The astonished mariners felt deeply ashamed at these words. The material fraud was the strongest proof in their eyes of their spiritual aberration also. They kissed the hem of Bar Noemi's mantle, and collecting the splinters of the shattered idol, flung them into the sea.
CHAPTER IV
THE RAFT AND THE GREEN DOVE
No sooner had the idol collapsed, than like a whimpering child lulled to sleep, the tempest suddenly abated. The howling of the wind died away; the lightning flashed no longer; the black masses of cloud dispersed in all directions; the agitated waves, after rocking the ship to and fro for a time, grew smoother and smoother, till at last a perfect calm reigned upon the waters.
"A miracle! a miracle!" cried the astonished crew; but as in the still night watches they raised their eyes to the cloudless sky, a fresh astonishment fell upon them. This starry heaven was not the heaven they were accustomed to. Those were other constellations. The seven stars of the Great Bear were no longer to be seen; the bright and constant polar star was no longer in its place; the mariner's guide, that double eye of heaven and all the other constellations of the Northern firmament, which the sailor regards in so poetic a light, whose going and coming he knows so well and whose position tells him in what part of the world he is—all these had vanished from the sky, and in their place were other stars, still more brilliant than they, which no man was able to call to mind. One of these stars shone with so intense a radiance that it cast shadows on the deck.
Amazed and anxious, the bewildered crew looked up into the unknown heaven which thus disturbed all their calculations, and turning to Bar Noemi, inquired timidly—
"Sir! where are we?"
Bar Noemi himself, not without secret horror, examined these stars of another world, and answered with a sigh—
"We are in God's hand!"