Now, however incredible what I am going to relate may appear especially as happening to O’Connor, yet it is, I can assure my readers, perfectly true. Terence had been sent on the fore-topgallant-yard—what to do I do not recollect, for I was aft at the time—when by some means or other he lost his hold and fell over the yard. Another man, who was on the yard and saw him fall, ejaculated, “Poor Terence, this time it’s all over with him!”
Falling from that height on the deck, his brains would inevitably have been dashed out of his head; but, as he fell, the hitherto sluggish wind filled the foresail, on the bulge of which, at the very instant his body striking, it was thrown with considerable force forward right into the sea. As before, Terence preserved his consciousness, or, at all events, recovered it as he struck the water. He struck out bravely alongside the ship.
“Heave us a rope, shipmates,” he sung out. I ran to the side, and was just in time to throw him a rope as he dropped past. He caught hold of it, and hand over hand he hauled himself on board into the mizzen-chains. From thence jumping into the waist, he shook himself dry, like a Newfoundland dog, and went forward again to his duty, as if nothing had happened.
“Peter,” he observed afterwards to me, when we were together, “if I never had any religion before, I think I should have some now. You see, when I felt myself going, I thought it was all up with me, and never was so surprised in my life as when I found myself in the water. Tell me, Peter, do you think it was God who made the foresail belly out at the moment it did?”
“I think it was by His will it so happened,” I answered. “I don’t think chance did it.”
“But do you think He would take the trouble to look after such a poor fellow as I am?” he asked.
“A sparrow, we are told by the Bible, falls not to the ground that He knows not of,” observed Andrew Thompson, who had sat himself down near us. “Then don’t you think, messmate, He would look after a human being, with a soul to be saved?”
“I feel that He preserved my life; but I don’t understand it,” replied Terence.
“No, messmate, none of us can understand His mysteries. We see the earth and the sky and sea—the sun and moon rise and set—we feel the wind blow, and the snow and the rain fall. But we cannot comprehend how all this is ordered, though we must acknowledge that it is for our good; and we feel that the power of the Ruler of all is so much greater than we can understand, that it is hope less to attempt it. But I say, messmate, that is no reason why we should not believe that all these things are; but, on the contrary, that God, who creates and cares for the smallest birds, watches over us also.”
We both acknowledged the truth of Andrew’s creed; and let me assure my young friends that a blessed comfort it was to us afterwards, when dangers, such as few have surmounted, surrounded us.