As the penitents grew calmer, they rose one by one to give their experience of Satan and salvation. At length Cæsar seized his opportunity and said, “And now Brother Quilliam will give us his experience.”
Pete rose from Kate's side with tearful eyes amid a babel of jubilation, most of it facetious. “Be of good cheer, Peter, be not afraid.”
“I've not much to tell,” said Pete—“only a story of backsliding. Before I earned enough to carry me up country, I worked a month at Cape Town with the boats. My master was a pious old Dutchman getting the name of Jan. One Saturday night a big ship lost her anchor outside, and on Sunday morning forty pounds was offered for finding it. All the boatmen went out except Jan. 'Six days shalt thou labour,' says he, 'but the seventh is the Sabbath.'”
Pete's address was here punctuated by loud cries of thanksgiving.
“All day long he was seeing the boats beating up the bay, so, to keep out of temptation, he was going up to the bedroom and pulling the blind and getting down on his knees and wrastling like mad. And something out of heaven was saying to him, 'It's the Lord's day, Jannie; they'll not get a ha'p'orth.' Neither did they; but when Jan's watch said twelve o'clock midnight the pair of us were going off like rockets. Well, we hadn't been ten minutes on the water before our grapplings had hould of that anchor.”
There were loud cries of “Glory!”
“Jan was shouting, 'The Lord has put us atop of it as straight as the lid of a taypot!'”
Great cries of “Hallelujah!”
“But when we came ashore we found Jan's watch was twenty minutes fast, and that was the end of the ould man's religion.”
That day the word went round that both Pete and Kate had been converted. Their names were entered in Class, and they received their quarterly tickets.