While you were below, you see, I got her mainsail in, and
that strip of sail has no more pull than a three-cloth jib. Please God,
we may get through. If anything happens to my mainmast I shall give
in--but it's a good spar."
Ferrier's mind went wandering with a sort of boding fierceness; he
framed dramatic pictures of all that was passing in the chaotic ruin of
shattered seas that rushed and seethed around. He had often spoken of
the gigantic forces of Nature, but the words had been like algebraic
formulae; now he saw the reality, and his rebellious mind was humbled.
"To-morrow, or next day, I shall have to see the misery that this
causes. But why should I talk of misery? The word implies a complaint.
A hundred smacksmen die to-night. Pitiful! But if this hurricane and all
the lesser breezes did not blow, then millions would die who live now in
healthy air. If the sea were not lashed up and oxygenated, we should
have a stagnant pest-hole like an old rotten fishpond all round the
world. England would be like Sierra Leone, and there would soon be no
human race. Who talks of kindness and goodness in face of a scene like
this? We know nothing. The hundred fishermen die, and the unpoisoned
millions live. We are shadows; we have not a single right. If I die
to-night, I shall have been spent by an Almighty Power that has used me.
Will He cast me to nothingness after I have fulfilled my purpose? Never.
There is not a gust of this wind that does not move truly according to
eternal law; there can be no injustice, for no one can judge the Judge.
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