“Nay,” said I, “doubtless he considered the homily as more profitable to you than the exercise you would prefer.”
But at this the old man waxed very wroth, and rose up and left me, saying that I was no better than a scoffer, and that Captain Freeman was yet in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity, and that ’twas not for him to judge what were profitable or not.
“What preacher of sedition have you on board here, captain?” says I, when I saw my friend next. “I looked not to find pestilent sectaries aboard the Boscobel.”
“ ’Tis old Substitution Darrell you would say,” said he. “A marvellous gift of exhortation he hath, and would sit up all the night arguing, so long as his fellows would hear him, and longer. But he is our best hand, and so staunch in his duty and punctual in the performing on’t as no one would ever believe. I have been near him in a storm, when all thought our last hour was come, but he was as cheerful as you may see him now. ’Twas one of his conditions of service that I should suffer him to expound the Scriptures to the rest of the crew, so long as he and they desired, and the Company’s occasions took no damage thereby, and I have heard him discourse so movingly concerning the love of God as that I was fain to depart so as he might not see me weep.”
“But sure you an’t at one with him in his opinions?” I asked.
“Nay,” says the skipper. “Darrell has told me once and again that I am in Babylon, by the which, as I take it, he signifieth the Church of England, and bids me come out therefrom, saying that God hath sent to me by his means for to warn me concerning my danger. And I seem to him to be a wilful sinner, thus contemning this saving grace. But yet, when I was once took sick with that evil disease of the plague of Egypt, Darrell stayed beside me for to tend me when all others fled from the very sight of me; yea, he also read to me divers most comfortable promises from his Bible, and in very deed saved my life. Yet he hath his strange points, for he holds to certain of the doctrines of that outlandish sect of the Fifth Monarchy Men, that will have it we are all Jews.”
“Doubtless he is mad concerning one or two points,” says I. “In fine, captain, I had rather that you had him always of your company than I.”
And so we, laughing, to dinner. But I was not yet done with this old man Darrell. For we were beset, as it chanced, on this voyage of ours, with many odious calms and contrary and baffling winds, so that we were sore impeded in our going. Then on the occasion of one of these calms the old man addressed himself to me once more.
“I fear lest I failed in my duty to you, sir, the t’other day,” says he, “for ’twas in my heart to declare to you divers inconsistencies in your walk and conversation,[81] and I refrained myself from so doing.”
“You were better do it now, then,” said I, somewhat angry that he asked no pardon for his presuming, and yet diverted by his words. He looked upon me sadly enough.