Still everything around us was so calm and quiet that it required no little faith in the judgment of our officers to believe that all this preparation was necessary. Much in the same way do men feel it difficult to believe in the importance of preparing for another world, when the tide of prosperity carries them along, without care or anxiety, over the sea of life. I have often thought that a gale of wind, a lee-shore on a dark night, and the risk of shipwreck, are of use to seamen, to make them prepare for the dangers which sooner or later must come upon them. So are all misfortunes—pain, sorrow, loss of friends, deprivation of worldly honours or position—sent to remind people that this world is not their abiding-place; that they are sent into it only that they may have the opportunity of preparing in it for another and a better world, which will last for eternity.
Hour after hour passed away. Still the calm continued. I suspect the officers themselves began to doubt whether the looked-for hurricane would ever come. I asked Peter what he thought about it.
“Come! ay, that it will,” he replied. “More reason that it will come with all its strength and fury because it is delayed. Look out there! do you see that?”
He pointed towards the now distant land. A dark cloud seemed to be rushing out from that direction, and extending rapidly on either side, while below the cloud a long line of white foam came hissing and rolling on towards us. As it reached the spot where we lay, the little vessel heeled over till I thought she would never rise again, and then she was turned round and round as if she had been a piece of straw. Loudly roared and howled the fierce blast, and on she drove helplessly before it. Every instant the sea rose higher and higher, and the schooner began to pitch, and toss, and tumble about, till I thought she would have been shaken to pieces.
“Peter,” said I, “we are in a bad way, I am afraid.”
“We should have been in a very much worse way had the wind come from another quarter, and driven us towards the land,” he replied, gravely. “Some of the people had begun to grumble because we had been drifted so far off-shore. We may now be thankful that we were not caught nearer to it, and have already made so much offing. We shall very likely have it round again, and then we shall require all the distance we have come to drive in, and none to spare.”
“I was thinking of the chance we have of going to the bottom,” said I, looking at the huge seas which kept tumbling tumultuously around us.
“Not much fear of that,” he answered. “We are in a strongly-built and tight little craft; and as long as she keeps off-shore, she’ll swim, I hope.”
Peter’s prognostications as to a shift of the wind were speedily fulfilled, and we found the vessel driving as rapidly towards the dreaded shore as she had before been carried from it. To struggle against it was hopeless; our only prospect of safety, should she be blown on it, was to find some creek or river into which we might run; but the probabilities of our finding such a shelter were so very remote, that all we could do was to pray that we might once more be driven away from the treacherous land. Happily such was our fate. Another eddy, as it were, of the whirlwind caught us, and once more we went flying away towards the coast of Cuba. That was, however, so far distant that there was but little fear but that the tempest would have spent its fury long before we could reach it. No sail could be set; but the vessel being in good trim, answered her helm, and kept before the wind.
Away! away we flew! surrounded with sheets of hissing foam, the wild waters dancing up madly on every side, threatening, should we stop but for a moment in our course, to sweep over our decks! Even careless as I then was, I could not help feeling grateful that we were not driving on towards a shore which must speedily stop us in our career; and I thought of the many poor fellows who would that day meet a watery grave, their vessels cast helplessly on the sea-beat rocks. As the wind took us along with it, we got more than our fair share of the hurricane; and the night came on while we were still scudding on, exposed to its fury.