“Use their brains, Watty, use their brains,” said Captain Samson, who had come aft, and been listening to the conversation. “Your brains, whether good or bad, were given to be used, not to be sold. The power to reason is a gift that is not bestowed only on extraordinary minds. The unlearned are sometimes better reasoners than the learned, though, of course, they haven’t got so many tools to work with. Still, they are sufficiently furnished with all that’s needful to run the race that is set before them. God has given to every man—civilised and savage—a brain to think with, a heart to feel with, a frame to work with, a conscience to guide him, and a world, with all its wonderful stores, in which to do what he will. Conscience—which, I think, is well named the voice of God in man—tells him to do right, and forbids him to do wrong; his heart glows with a certain degree of pleasure when he does well, and sinks, more or less, when he does ill; his reason tells him, more or less correctly, what is right, and what is wrong. The Word of God is the great chart given to enlighten our understandings and guide us heavenward. As my reason tells me to go to my charts for safe direction at sea, so every man’s reason will tell him to go to God’s revealed Word, when he believes he has got it. There he will find that Jesus Christ is the centre of the Word, the sum and substance of it, that he cannot believe in or accept the Saviour except by the power of the Holy Spirit. He will also find the blessed truth that God has promised the Spirit to those who simply ‘ask’ for Him. There is no difficulty in all this. The great and numberless difficulties by which we are undoubtedly surrounded are difficulties of detail, which we may be more or less successful in solving, according to our powers of mind, coupled with our submission to the revealed will of God. To some extent we fail and get into trouble because we lazily, or carelessly, let other men think for us, instead of making use of other men’s thoughts to help us to think for ourselves. Depend upon it, Watty, we won’t be able to justify ourselves at the judgment day by saying that things were too deep for us, that things seemed to be in such a muddle that it was of no use trying to clear ’em up. Why, what would you say of the mainspring of a watch if it were suddenly to exclaim, ‘I’ll give up trying! Here am I—so powerful and energetic, and so well able to spin round—checked, and hindered, and harassed by wheels and pinions and levers, some going this way, and some going that way, all at sixes and sevens, and all for no good end that I can see, buried as I am in this dark hole and scarcely allowed to move at all?’ Would it be right or reasonable to charge the watchmaker with having made the watch in vain, or made it wrong? Of this I at least am convinced, that God is perfect, and that all things are working towards a good end, God’s sovereignty, our mysterious free-will and personal responsibility being among these ‘all things.’”
While Captain Samson was discoursing on these important subjects, the look-out on the forecastle reported a sail on the weather-bow.
“She’s a whaler, I do believe, and her boats are after a sperm whale,” said Simon O’Rook, who stood by the mizzen shrouds looking intently at her through his double glass. Simon, being now a rich man, had not only taken a cabin passage, but had bought for himself one of the best binocular telescopes to be had in San Francisco.
It was soon seen that O’Rook was right for the whale rose to blow, and swam towards the Rainbow, while the boats of the whaler immediately followed in pursuit.
Great was the excitement on board the Rainbow as the men clustered on the forecastle, or ran up the rigging, to watch the chase, while the officers and passengers got out their telescopes.
“Come here, Polly,” cried Jack; “look through my glass. It’s a rare chance you’ve got of seeing what men have to go through in order to send oil to market.”
Polly at once accepted the invitation. Jack assisted her to mount on the top of the capstan, and arranged the glass.
“There she blows!” shouted one of the men who had been an old whaler; “there she breaches!”
As he spoke the whale rose about three miles to windward of them, not far from the boat that led the chase. The men in the boat were seen to bend to their oars, as Captain Samson said, “with a will.” Another moment and the harpooneer stood up in the bow. The spectators were too far off to see the weapon used, but they could perceive the man’s action, and there was no possibility of mistake as to the result, when the tail of the enormous creature was suddenly flourished in the air, and came down on the sea like a clap of distant thunder.
“Oh! oh!!” shrieked the horrified Polly, “the boat is gone!”