From this point Evan, whose earnest spirit was always hungering after the souls of men, led the conversation to religious subjects, and got his audience into a serious, attentive state of mind.
We have said that David Bright had remained that light on deck, but he did not on that account lose all that went on in the little cabin. He heard indeed the light conversation and chaff of the earlier part of the night but paid no heed to it. When, however, Evan began the foregoing anecdote, his attention was aroused, and as the speaker sat close to the foot of the companion every word he uttered was audible on deck.
At the time, our fallen skipper was giving way to despair. He had been so thoroughly determined to give up drink; had been so confident of the power of his really strong will, and had begun the struggle so well and also continued for a time so successfully, that this fall had quite overwhelmed him. It was such a thorough fall, too, accompanied by such violence to his poor boy and to one of his best men, that he had no heart for another effort. And once again the demon tempter came to him, as he stood alone there, and helpless on the deserted deck. A faint gleam of light, shooting up the companion, illuminated his pale but stern features which had an unusual expression on them, but no eye was there to look upon those features, save the all-searching Eye of God.
“It was soon over with him!” he muttered, as he listened to Evan telling of Zola’s leap into the sea. “An’ a good riddance to myself as well as to the world it would be if I followed his example. I could drop quietly over, an’ they’d never find it out till—but—”
“Come, don’t hesitate,” whispered the demon. “I thought you were a man once, but now you seem to be a coward after all!”
It was at this critical point that Evan, the mate of the Sparrow, all ignorant of the eager listener overhead, began to urge repentance on his unbelieving comrades, and pointed to the Crucified One—showing that no sinner was beyond hope, that Peter had denied his Master with oaths and curses, and that even the thief on the cross had life enough left for a saving look.
“We have nothing to do, lads, only to submit,” he said, earnestly.
“Nothing to do!” thought David Bright in surprise, not unmingled with contempt as he thought of the terrible fight he had gone through before his fall.
“Nothing to do!” exclaimed John Gunter in the cabin, echoing, as it were, the skipper’s thought, with much of his surprise and much more of his contempt. “Why, mate, I thought that you religious folk felt bound to pray, an’ sing, an’ preach, an’ work!”
“No, lad—no—not for salvation,” returned Evan; “we have only to accept salvation—to cease from refusing it and scorning it. After we have got it from and in Jesus, we will pray, and sing, and work, ay, an’ preach too, if we can, for the love of the Master who ‘loved us and gave Himself for us.’”