NOTES ON THE INTERNATIONAL LESSON.
By Farrar's Life of Paul
AFTER they had drifted fourteen days, tossed up and down on the heaving waves of Adria, a weltering plaything for the gale, suddenly on the fourteenth night the sailors, amid the sounds of the long-continued storm, fancied that they heard the roar of breakers through the midnight darkness. Suspecting that they were nearing some land, and perhaps even detecting that white phosphorescent gleam of a surf-beat shore which is visible so far through even the blackest night, they dropped the lead and found that they were in twenty-fathom water. Sounding again, they found that they were in fifteen fathoms. Their suspicions and fears were now turned to certainty, and here was the fresh danger of having their desolate hulk driven irresistibly upon some iron coast. In the face of this fresh peril the only thing to be done was to drop anchor. Having done this, they could only yearn with intense desire for the dawn of day. All through the remaining hours of that long wintry night, they stood face to face with the agony of death. In its present condition, the leak constantly gaining on them, the waves constantly deluging them with spray, the vessel might at any moment sink, even if the anchors held. But they did not know, what we know, that those anchors had dropped into clay of extraordinary tenacity, which, indeed, was the sole circumstance between them and hopeless wreck. Gradually through the murky atmosphere of rain and tempest, the grim day began to dawn upon the miserable crew. Almost as soon as they could see the dim outlines of their own faces, haggard and ghastly with so much privation and so many fears, they observed that they were anchored off a low point, over which the sea was curling with a huge and most furious surf. Ignorant that this was Point Koura, on the northeast side of Malta, and not recognizing a single landmark on the featureless shore, the only thought of the selfish heathen sailors was to abandon the hulk and crew to their fate, while they saved themselves in the boat which they had with such trouble and danger hoisted on board. Pretending, therefore, that they could steady the pitching of the ship, and therefore make her hold together for a longer time, if they used more anchors, and laid them out at full length of the cables instead of merely dropping them from the prow, they began to unlash the boat and lower her into the sea. Had they succeeded in their plot, they would probably have been swamped in the surf upon the point, and all on board would inevitably have perished from inability to handle the sinking vessel. From this danger alike the crew and the sailors were once more saved by the prompt energy and courage of St. Paul. Seeing through the base design, he quietly observed to Julius, who was the person of most authority on board, “If these sailors do not stay in the ship, ye cannot be saved.” He says “ye,” not “we.” Strong in God’s promise, he had no shadow of doubt respecting his own preservation, but the promise of safety to all the crew was conditional on their own performance of duty. The soldiers, crowded together in the vessel with their prisoners, heard the remark of Paul, and—since he alone at that wild moment of peril had kept calm, and was therefore the virtual captain—without the smallest scruple drew their swords and cut through the boat’s ropes, letting her fall away in the trough of the sea. But the daylight had now increased, and the hour was approaching in which everything would depend upon their skill and promptitude, and on the presence of mind of all on board. Once more, therefore, the apostle encouraged them, and urged them all to take some food. “This is the fourteenth day,” he said, “on which you are continuing foodless, in constant anxiety and vigilance, without taking anything. I entreat you, then, all to join in a meal, which is indeed essential to that preservation, of which I assure you with confidence, for not a hair of the head of any one of you shall perish.” And having given them this encouragement, he himself set the example. Making of the simplest necessity of life a religious and eucharistic act, he took bread, gave thanks to God in the presence of them all, broke it, and began to eat. Catching the contagion of his cheerful trust, the drenched, miserable throng of two hundred and seventy-six souls, who had so long been huddled together in their unspeakable wretchedness and discomfort, as their shattered vessel lay rolling and tossing under the dismal clouds, took fresh courage, and shared with him in a hearty meal. Knowing that this was the last meal they could ever take in the dismasted vessel, and also that it would be impossible to save the cargo, they lightened and righted the vessel by flinging overboard the wheat, which in the long drift of four hundred and seventy-six miles from Clauda in the storm must have shifted much to one side and made the vessel heel over in a dangerous manner. When the full daylight enabled them to examine the shore, they saw no recognizable landmark—since the present Valetta, the harbor of Malta, at which ships often touched, was seven miles E.S.E. of the point where they were wrecked; but they saw a bay, at one extremity of which the cliffs sank down into a flat beach, and the only thing which they could hope to do was to thrust the ship out of her direct course, and strand her at this spot. They therefore cut away the anchors, letting the ropes drop into the sea, unlashed and let down the paddle-rudders, hoisted the foresail to the wind, and steered straight for the beach. But their maneuver was a failure. They had unconsciously anchored off Ras el Koura. The opposite point looked like another promontory, but was in reality the island of Salmonetta, separated from the mainland by a deep, narrow, and precipitous channel. Through this channel, about a hundred yards in width, ran a current, and in the stormy race where the waters of this current met the waters of the bay, the vessel would not answer to the helm, and all they could do was to run her ashore. Happily for them she drove, not upon a rock, but deep into a bank of mud, such as still exists at that very spot. Here the prow stuck immovably fast, while the stern was free. The crew rushed to the prow, while the waves, which broke with fury over the unsupported stern, began instantly to batter it to pieces. Here, even at this extremity, there rose for Paul and the other prisoners a new, unexpected, and yet more terrible danger. It was the duty of the soldiers to be responsible with their own lives for their prisoners. The Roman law was stern, rigid, and unbending, nor did it admit of any extenuating plea. So long as death seemed imminent, and every hand on board might be useful in averting it, the prisoners must have been left unchained; but in such a crisis as this, what was there to prevent any one of them from taking a dive into the sea, and so escaping? It would have been a horrible thing that blood and butchery should stain the planks of a shipwrecked199vessel at the very moment when safety seemed within reach, and that this human sacrifice of lives which God had rescued should be the only thanksgiving of the survivors. From this peril the prisoners were again indirectly saved by him whose counsel and encouragement had all along been the direct source of their preservation. If the prisoners were to be killed, equal justice, or injustice, must be dealt to all of them alike, and Julius felt that it would be dastardly ingratitude to butcher the man to whom, under God's providence, they all owed their rescued lives. He therefore forbade the design of the soldiers, and gave orders that every one who could swim should first fling himself overboard, and get to land. The rest seized hold of planks and other fragments of the fast-dissolving wreck. The wind threw them landwards, and at last by the aid of the swimmers all were saved, and—at a spot which, owing to the accurate fidelity of the narrative, can still be exactly identified—a motley group of nearly three hundred drenched, and shivering, and weather-beaten sailors and soldiers, and prisoners and passengers, stood on that chill and stormy November morning upon the desolate and surf-beat shore of the island of Malta. Some, we are sure, there were who joined with Paul in hearty thanks to the God who, though he had not made the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof were still, had yet brought them safe to land, through all the perils of that tempestuous month.