When this story was concluded, Mrs. Dusenall, and many of her kind; and the unimpressionable girls looked acquiescence, because the words were backed by the Church, but their hearts went out to the poor sinners in Chicago. Only with those who took their mental bias from the priest did his words find solid resting-place. Geoffrey sat with an inmovable face, impossible to read. His subsequent remark to Margaret, when she had delivered her opinions about the matter, was, however, characteristic. He said simply, as if deprecating her vehemence:
"The man must live, you know, and how is he to live if people go out of town on Sunday." To Geoffrey a short time was sufficient to satisfy him that the preacher ought to have lived in the days when mankind were saturated with belief in miracle and looked for explanation of events by miracle without dreaming of other explanation.
During the next five minutes the sermon rather wandered from the subject, but fastened upon it again in an anecdote of an occurrence said to have taken place at an American seaport town, during the preacher's visit there.
Several young mechanics, instead of going to church one Sunday morning, had engaged a yawl, and also the fishermen who owned it, to take them to a village on the coast and back again. It appeared from the account that for a day and a night the yawl had been blown away from the coast, and then that the wind had changed, so as to drive it back again; and the story of the voyage naturally found attentive listeners among our yachting friends.
"All through that first terrible day, and all through the long, black night they were tossed about among the giant billows of a most tempestuous ocean. And what, dear friends, must have been the agony and remorse of those misguided young men when they thus realized the results of their deliberate breaking of the holy day. As they clung to the frail vessel, which reeled to and fro beneath them like a drunken man, and which now alone remained to possibly save them from a watery grave—as they perceived the billows breaking in upon that devoted ship, insomuch that it was covered with waves, what must have been their sensations? And when the wind suddenly changed its direction and blew them with terrible force back again toward the rocky coast, we can imagine how earnestly they made their resolutions never again to transgress in this way. Once more, after a while, they saw the land again, and as they came closer they could discern the spires of those holy edifices which they had abandoned for the sake of forbidden pleasures and in which they were doomed never to hear the teachings of the Church again. There lay the harbor before them, as if in mockery of all their attempts to reach it; and while raised on high in the air, on the summit of some white, mountainous billow, they could obtain a Pisgah-like view of those homes they were destined never again to enter."
Jack was broad awake now and wondering why, with the wind dead after them, the fishermen in charge of the boat could not make the harbor.
"Suddenly there came a great noise, which no doubt sounded like a death knell in the hearts of the terrified and exhausted young men. It was soon discovered that the mainsail of the ship had been blown away by the fury of the tempest."
"Now what was their unhappy condition? How could they any longer strive to reach the longed-for haven when the mainsail of the yawl was blown away?"
Jack shifted in his seat uncomfortably at this point. He was saying to himself: "Why not sneak in under a jib? Or even under bare poles? Or, if the harbor was intricate, why not heave to under the mizzen and signal for a tug?" Half a score of possibilities followed each other through his brain, which in sailing matters worked quickly. He always inclined from his early training to accept without question all that issued from the pulpit; but this story bothered him. The instructor went on:
"Clearly there was now no hope for the devoted vessel. Even the anchor was gone; the anchor of Hope, dear friends, was gone. The strong trustworthy anchor (in which mariners place so great confidence that it has become the type or symbol of Hope) was gone—washed overboard by the temptuous waves."