Search results

"With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God.

"In black distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints -- No more the whale did me confine.

"I saw the opening maw of ****, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell -- Oh, I was plunging to despair.

"The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom.

This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog -- in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy --

He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.

There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher.

"Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboard -- larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!"

CHAPTER IX. The Sermon. Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense.

More than once.

I like metal.

Didn't we already know?

Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; the pulpit is its prow. Did you really?

From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds.

From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt.

What could be more full of meaning? -- for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world.

Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed beak.

Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture.

"Ah, noble ship," the angel seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off serenest azure is at hand."

But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel's face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into the Victory's plank...