The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

By this, the night had settled on the sea,
An interlunar night bereft of stars,
For the dark azure of the deep was black
To blackness of the overhanging heaven
Hung thick with clouds. "See," Rachel added soon,
"How the sky lowers! God fend us all from storm!
Good night, my brother. David's word for me,
'In peace will I both lay me down and sleep,
For Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell
In safety.'" "Yea, in safety also here,
O sister," Paul said; "for the sea is His,
He holds it in the hollow of His hand."
Brother and sister parted with a kiss—
Kiss from the kindred habit of old time
Dear, but far dearer in a dearer love,
And, with some sense of reconcilement, sweet.
Therewith the sister to her pillow went;
But Paul abode to vigil on the deck.
He pacing to and fro, the night wore on,
And one by one his fellow-passengers
Withdrawing left him more and more alone.

A sheen of phosphorescence on the sea
Kindled along the running vessel's side,
And drew a trail of brilliance in her wake,
Splendid a moment and then vanishing,
Devoured by the immensity of dark
Which made it for that moment so intense.
Paul saw this, less admiring what he saw,
Beautiful though it was and wonderful,
Than musing what it seemed to mean for him:
'So my soul on her voyage through the world
Lights her own pathway as she moves along;
Bright ever where she is she makes her place,
And ever plunges on into the dark
Before her; but her latter end is light!'

Meanwhile, of all the lingerers on the deck
Amid that darkness, only two remained.
These, as they might, watched him now bending there
In wistful gaze over the vessel's side
Downward into the waters weird below:
Stephen was one; the other, Shimei.
But Shimei had crept later on the deck,
When the increasing dark veiled all from view
Save what was moving or what stood upright;
So he knew not of Stephen now reclined,
Motionless in a trance of pleasant dream,
There where Eunicé left him, when she too
With Rachel from the open night retired.
The youth had lapped him in a happy muse
Of memory of the things they twain that eve
Had shared in converse; it was like twilight
Prolonging softer the full light of day.
Shimei thought darkly: 'Could yon leaning form
Lean farther, and embrace indeed the wave
He yearns toward, this enticing murky night!
There were redemption ready-wrought for me—
Who might be spared, forsooth, accusing whom
His own forestalling conscience had condemned,
(So it should look!) and forced him on to die.
"Vengeance is mine and recompense," as saith
Our Moses, hinting of a moment when
"Their foot shall slide." Ha! Ha! It fits the case!
"Their foot shall slide!" Feet may be brought to slide!
The deck is slippery with the spray; a tip
Forward above, with a trip backward, so,
From underneath'—and Shimei acted out
In pantomimic gesture his quick thought;
'An accidental movement, were it seen,
But it would not be seen. A fine dark night,
No moon, no stars, and the whole hollow sky
Ink-black with clouds that when ere long they break
Will spit ink-rain into an inky sea!
Finger of God! It were impiety
Not to obey a pointing such as this.'
His propense thought plunged him a step toward Paul.
Stephen hereon, stretched out upon the deck,
Marking the sinister action of the man
Shadowed upon the dark, a denser dark,
Noiselessly gathered up his members all,
Ready to rush at need to rescue, yet
Reserved, alert, to watch and to await,
Like leopard couchant tense in poise to spring.

That instant, a new dimness in the dark,
A swimming outline, figure of a man
Approaching, with a rustle of approach
Hinted, no more, amid the rising wind.
This Stephen knew, and Shimei, both at once.
Shimei recoiled; he thought, 'Well paused for me!
I might have been detected, after all!'
Then, gliding toward that shadowy moving form,
He met—a Roman soldier, front to front,
Nigh Stephen where he lay in ambuscade
Unpurposed, but now vigilant all ear
For what might pass between those men so met.
A sudden shift of phase to Shimei's thought,
In altered phase persistent still the same.
The desperate fancy seized him to essay
Corrupting that custodian of Paul.

A helpless fixed fatuity of hate,
A dull insistent prodding from despair,
Robbed him of reason, while of cunning not:
He could warp wisely toward an end unwise.
Suspected by the Roman, by the Jew
No longer trusted as of old—since seen,
Those years at Cæsarea, changed and chilled
So from his pristine ardor in pursuit
Of Paul—Shimei saw nothing now before
Him in the future but the nearing close
In a blind alley, opening none beyond,
Of the strait way wherein perforce he walked.
One gleam of light, of possible light, ahead,
He now descried. If Paul could somehow be
Utterly cancelled from his case, no Paul
Anywhere longer in the world, and if,
Ah, if, O rapture! Paul could disappear
Confessing guilt by seeming suicide—
That were the one deliverance left to hope,
Hope if forlorn, at least, at least, a hope.
Shimei his foot set softly in the snare.

With slow and sly ambages of approach,
He sounded if the soldier were of stuff
To be in safety tampered with, and how.
Close at his feet, but guarded from their touch
By a low heap of cordage coiled between,
There Stephen lay the while, a breathless corpse,
And listened—with his body and his mind
Both utterly all organ to attend—
As Shimei with that shifty cunning his,
Insidious, like the entrance of disease,
Wormed him into the bosom of his man,
Instilling the temptation, sweet with bribe,
To make away with his Jew prisoner.
It would but give the wretch's wish effect—
So Shimei glozed with subtle speciousness—
Should now his gentle keeper intervene
To end the endless waverings of a mind
On self-destruction bent, a suicide
Who only lacked the courage of despair,
By tossing Paul headforemost overboard.
Three points thereby were gained, and nothing lost:
A criminal would meet his just desert,
One fain to die his heart's desire obtain,
And he, the soldier, no one wiser, take
The profit, gold in hand, of a good deed.
"Thou knowest," the tempter said, "the feel of gold,
The weight," and therewith thrust some pieces broad
Into the soldier's hand, the antepast
And warrant of a ready rich reward.
If question should arise involving him,
Why, nothing easier than to say and swear,
The prisoner, conscious of his guilt, and now
Quite at the end of all his hopes by wile,
Had used the favoring cover of the night
To make a sudden spring into the brine.
He, heedful of his duty and his charge,
Had promptly put the utmost effort forth
To seize him, and defeat the dire attempt.
But desperation was too masterful
In force and quickness, to be so forestalled.
The fates and furies buoyed him overboard
And plumped him to the bottom of the deep.
Then, were his single witness held in doubt,
Why, by good luck, here was a passenger
Who saw the fellow fetch his frenzied leap,
And saw his watchman hold him back in vain;
He, Shimei, would not fail him at the pinch,
To swear him clear of any touch of blame.

The soldier, to this word, had little spoke,
Nothing that might import his secret thought,
Heed giving in blank silence, ominous,
Or hopeful, for his tempter, dubious which.
Now he spoke, saying: "Glibly dost thou talk,
Making the task light, laughable the risk.
Know it is perilous business, this of thine.
Yon Paul appears a prisoner of note,
Whom our centurion, for his reasons, treats
With favor"—"For his reasons, yea; well said,"
Interposed Shimei; "but such reasons fail
Promptly when the purse fails that yields them. End
Already, as I know, was reached with Paul,
When he at Sidon bought his leave to land,
Hoping a rescue." "But," the soldier said,
"Paul seems indeed to be a worthy man."
"A wise head, thou," the wily Jew replied;
"'Seems,'—thou hast once more hit it in that word!
Fair-seeming truly, rotten at the core."
"However that may be," the guard rejoined,
"Rotten or sound the man, it were a deed,
A bold deed, deed of risk and price, to do
What thou requirest." 'Willing,' Shimei thought,
'Willing, but greedy; bid for higher pay!
Bait him his fill, no time for higgling now.'
He said: "Bold enterprises to the bold.
Yea, there is risk; no need to make it small;
It is a soldier I am talking with.
But I will amply match the risk with wage.
Thy peril stint not thou, I not thy pay.
Here is a scrip stuffed out with yellow gold,
Test it for weight, thou earnest it all this night."

The soldier had but meant to parley: now
This toying with temptation by the touch,
Added to his long dalliance through the ear,
Proved penetrant, seductive, so beyond
His forethought, that he stood amazed, appalled,
Listening, to feel how much he was enticed.
He might have yielded to the sorcery,
But Stephen, with an instant instinct wise,
Sudden sprang, speechless, imminent, to his feet.
The soldier at the apparition took
A fine air of indignant virtue on.
"Rascal," said he, "I have trolled thee well along
From point to point and let thee talk and talk,
And my palm tickle with the touch of gold,
Or counterfeit of gold, thou counterfeit
Of man! Thou hast shown thyself for what thou art.
Thy proffered bribe I keep for proof of thee;
But thou, thou goest with me my prisoner.
A night in irons down in the deepest hold
May give thee waking dreams thy morrow's chance
With the centurion hardly will dispel!"
Therewith he stalked off Shimei, stunned to dumb
And dizzy, with that deafening crack of doom.

Scarce less astonished and scarce less dismayed,
Stephen stood stricken on the staggering deck;
The roaring of the unregarded wind
Less noisy than the tumult of his thoughts.
The contrast of the horror of such crime
To the sweet peace and pleasure he but now
Was tasting in the hallowing afterglow
Of those bright moments with Euníce spent;
The frightful danger overpast for Paul;
The retribution, like a thunderbolt,
Fallen on Shimei; these, with remembrance mixed
Of what the chiliarch, wiser than he knew,
Said, touching Shimei with that letter charged
Of sinister import to Cæsarea,
"He carries his own sentence thither hence"—
'Unwritten sentence in his bosom, yea,
He carried, and he carries, wretched man!'
Thought Stephen. 'And what dire things in the world!
And God from heaven beholds and suffers all!
And what will be the end, if ever end,
Of all this tale of wickedness with woe
Drawn out from age to age, through clime and clime!'

Such thoughts on thoughts held Stephen hanging there
Unnoted minutes, till the dash of rain
In great drops threatening deluge smote his face
Like hailstones, and awoke him to the world.
At the same moment, Paul—who had not dreamed
Of the swift, muffled, darkling tragedy
Of plot and peril, shame and crime and doom,
Just acted nigh him in that theater,
And microcosm afloat of the wide world—
Broke up the long lull of his reverie
Above the running waters, heard, scarce seen,
Beneath him, by the hasting vessel's side—
As if a symbol of the mystery
Of things, an-hungered to devour all thought!—
And turned to shroud him from the weather wild.
The uncle and the nephew met, but spoke
Only a peace and farewell for the night;
Stephen not finding in his heart to break
To Paul the ill good news of what had passed.