The land descried
They knew not, but there was no land unknown
That were not better than that wallowing sea.
So, cutting loose their anchors, they made sail
And drove the vessel aground upon a beach,
Where the keel plunged into the yielding sand
Which closing heavy upon it held her fast;
But the free stern rocked on the billowing surge
That soon atwain must break her in the midst.
Hardness of habit and of discipline
Partly, and partly a self-regarding fear
Lest they be held to answer with their lives,
If even amid the mortal panic pangs
Of shipwreck they should let their charge escape,
Made now those Roman soldiers, in the jaws
Themselves yet of the common peril hung,
Ready to put their prisoners to the sword;
But Julius stayed them for the sake of Paul.
"You that can swim," he shouted, "overboard!"
Some thus, and some on spars buoyed up, and some
On other floatage of the breaking wreck,
They all got safe to shore, not one soul lost.
The master of the rescue still was Paul;
Calm, but alert, completely self-possessed—
(Possessor of himself, yet not himself
Considering, save to sacrifice himself
Freely at need); his courage and his hope
Inspiring hope and courage; self-command
In him aweing the rest to self-command;
His instinct instant and infallible
Amid the terror and the turbulence,—
Winds howling and sea heaving and strait room
For nigh three hundred souls in face of death!—
Each moment seeing ere the moment passed
What the need was and what the measure meet
To match it—that serene old man and high
Was as an angel there descended who
Could had he chosen at once have stayed the storm,
But rather chose to wield it as he would.
The captain of the vessel and the man
Whose was the vessel, these, with Julius too,
Roman centurion as he was in charge,
Grouped themselves close by Paul and heard his word
And had it heeded without stay by all.
"I shall be last to leave the ship," Paul cried,
"Do therefore ye the things that I advise.
The women first. Lady Drusilla, thou
Commit thyself to four picked sailors, these"—
The master of the vessel chose them out—
"Two soldiers with them—Julius, by thy leave
And of thy choice—and on this ample spar
Supported thou shalt safely come to land;
And, Madam, thy little son shall go with thee."
They lashed them to the timber, lowered it fair
(With Felix desperately hugging it,
The image of a sordid craven fear);
The men detailed leapt overboard to it,
And steering it as they could with feet and hands
Let the sea wave on wave wash it ashore:
She was indignant to be rescued so,
But by abrupt necessity was tamed.
"Let me, I pray thee, save thy sister, Paul,"
Said Sergius Paulus, who, assuming yea,
Forthwith led Rachel—she with such a grace
Of confidence in him as made him strong
Following—to where a fragment of the deck
Disjointed in the vessel's agony
Lay loosened, which he clove and wrenched away;
Then watching when the vessel listed right
And the sea met it with a slope of wave,
They, this beneath them, clinging to it, slid
Down the steep floor into the frothing brine
Stephen was by and helped them make the launch.
Sergius, from the side opposite to her—
To steady the light wreckage all he might
Lest wanting balance it should overturn—
Reaching across, kept Rachel's fingers clasped
In hold upon the wavering wood, until,
What with his oarage and the wash of waves,
They found a melting foothold on the sand.
Krishna stood wishing to be serviceable,
And when to Aristarchus, stout and brave,
Paul was commending Mary, at a look
From the Indian that imported such desire,
Leave was given him to undertake for Ruth.
Each of the two life-savers rent a door
From off its hinges and thereon secured
The women awed in that extreme assay
Yet girded to a constancy of calm,
And, Stephen helping, lowered them to the deep.
Krishna was let down after by a rope,
No swimmer he, but Ruth too held the rope
And drew him to the float whereon she tossed.
Greek Aristarchus was a swimmer born
And practised, and he plunged headforemost down,
Soon to emerge with easy buoyancy
And aim unerring true where Mary rode.
The two then—Aristarchus in the lead
Teaching the Indian how, and, with the rope
Flung to his hand at his desire by Ruth
And by him featly bound about his waist,
Drawing the floatage forward, while his own
He pushed with swimming—won their way to shore.
Twice Aristarchus was, for stress of wave,
Fain to release his hold upon his float,
So fierce the tug, and sudden, at his waist;
But he, by swimming and by seamanship
Consummate joined to strength well-exercised,
Strength by the exigence redoubled now,
Both times regained it and thenceforward kept.
Mary meanwhile, forsaken, faltered not;
She felt the stay of other hands than his.
All his advices and permissions Paul
Put forth in such continuous sequence swift
That well-nigh simultaneous all they seemed:
The vessel swarmed with ordered movement mixed,
And the sea lived with strugglers for the shore.
Of all these only Simon had the cool
Cupidity and temerity to risk
Weighting himself with treasure to bear off
In rescue from the wreck; he his loved gold,
Ill-gotten gains of sorcery and of fraud,
Secretly carried with him safe to land.
Stephen did not lack helpers; Julius bade
Varenus, of the soldiers, serve his wish;
And Syrus, a young slave of Felix's,
Sprang of his own free motion joyfully
To help him pluck Eunicé out of scath;
For he had marked the youthful Hebrew pair
With distant, upward-looking, loyal love
Instinctive toward such virtue and such grace.
But, "Nay," Eunicé said, "not yet for me;
See there those trembling creatures"—the hand-maids
Of dame Drusilla—"rescue first for them!"
On a good splinter of the tall curved stem—
The sign of Ceres at the gilded beak—
By the rude violence of the shock torn off
When the ship grounded, they tied the two slave girls;
But the shipmaster fair Eunicé's act
Of self-postponing nobleness admired,
And bade two trusty seamen help let down
That beam life-laden soft into the sea
Whither they, at the master's further word,
Followed it, as with frolic leap to death,
And brought it safely to the wave-washed shore.
Then Stephen and Eunicé, each to each
As if in a symbolic bond of fate
Linked, with a length of rope allowing play
Between them for their wrestle with the surge,
And having each in hold a wooden buoy
Provided with what might be firmly grasped,
Wieldy in size yet equal to support
Them safe above the summits of the sea,
Were lowered by eager volunteers who all
Sped them to their endeavor for the land.
They reached it and thanked God for life such prize.
The soldiers that were bidden overboard
To take their chance of swimming to the beach
Bore with them lines which, stretched from ship to shore,
Became the means of saving many souls;
The most were thus, some buoyed on floats of wood,
Some dragged half drowning through the sandy surf,
Landed at last—forlorn, but yet alive.
Paul was not, as he had his will to be
Announced, quite last to leave the breaking bark;
Centurion Julius would not have it so.
When all except the owner of the ship
And the shipmaster and himself with Paul
(And Luke, who would not quit the apostle's side)
Were safe ashore, he intervened for Paul.
Now so it was, the mast to which was tied
The rescue-line beneath the strain gave way
And fell with a great crash along the deck.
On this those four made fast the brave old man
Who with his counsel and his cheer had saved
So many, counting not his own life dear
But seen, the crisis of the need now past,
Exhausted, tremulous, and nigh to sink.
Then having with great strength—helped by a lurch
That now the vessel seasonably gave—
Pushed smoothly overboard the noble spar
Entrusted with that treasure of a life,
Prompt they plunged after it into the brine,
And having reached it, clung to it, and well
Buoyed up upon its surging lift, were borne
Themselves with Paul by urgent wind and wave
Safe to the beach, where those arrived before
Met them with outstretched arms and cheers and tears.