The day became sultry when the mist had cleared away, and by noon the heat was more oppressive than had been known all the Summer. Wesley was exhausted by the time he set out with Mr. Hartwell to return to the village. They needed no mariner's compass now to tell them the way.
They scarcely exchanged a word. They seemed to have forgotten the conditions under which they had gone forth in the early morning. A new world seemed to have been created since then—a world upon which the shadow of darkness could not fall for evermore.
They had gone straight to the cliffs, hoping for a breath of air from the sea to refresh them; but they were disappointed; the air was motionless and the reflection of the sunlight from the waves was dazzling in its brilliancy.
“I should have thought that the very weight of this heavy atmosphere would make the sea like glass,” said Wesley, while they rested on the summit of the cliff. “And yet there are waves such as I have never seen on this part of the coast unless when something akin to a gale was blowing.”
“I daresay there was a strong breeze blowing, though we did not feel it in the shelter of the hollow of the Tor,” said his companion.
“True; it would require a strong wind to sweep away the mist so suddenly,” said Wesley.
“Ah, sir,” said the other, “I did not think of a wind in that connection. Was it the fingers of the wind, think you, that swept that thick veil aside, or was it the Hand that rent in twain the veil of the Temple?”
“I am reproached, brother,” said Wesley. “Let us give thanks unto God. May He give us grace to think of all things as coming from Him—whether they take the form of a mist which obscures His purpose, or the darkness of a tempest on which He rides. I know myself wanting in faith at all times—in that faith without reserve which a child has in his father. I confess that for a moment in the morning I had the same thought as that which was expressed by the old man who joined us: I thought it possible that that fog which threatened to frustrate our walk had been sent by the Enemy. Should I have thought so if our work had been hindered in very truth? I dare not say no to that question. But now I know that it helped rather than obstructed, us.”
“There can be no doubt about that,” said Hartwell. “For myself, I say that I was never so deeply impressed in my life as at that moment when I found myself looking at you; you were speaking of the world awakening, and it seemed to me that I had been asleep—listening to the sound of your voice—the voice of a dream, and then I was full awake, I knew not how. I tell you, Mr. Wesley, I was not conscious of the change that was taking place—from darkness to light.”
“Nor was I,” said Wesley. “My eyes were closed fast while I was preaching. I had closed them to shut out that incongruous picture of obscurity, while I thought of the picture of the breaking of light; when I opened my eyes the picture that I had been striving to paint was before me. It was the Lord's doing.”
While they remained resting on the cliff the officer of the Preventive men came upon them. He knew Hartwell, and had, when Wesley had been in the neighbourhood before, thanked him for the good influence his preaching had in checking the smuggling.
He now greeted them cordially and enquired if they had come from the village, adding that he hoped the fishing boats had not suffered from the effects of the tide.
“We left the port early in the morning, and in the face of the mist. What is the matter with the tide?” said Hartwell.
“You have not been on the beach? Why, 'tis a marvel, gentlemen,” cried the officer. “The like has not been seen since I took up my appointment in this neighbourhood—a tide so high that the caves are flooded to the roof. List, sirs; you can hear naught of the usual boom of the waters when the pressed air forces them back.”
They listened, but although there was the usual noise of the waves breaking along the coast, the boom from the caves which had been heard at intervals through the mist was now silent.
“As a rule 'tis at high tide that the sound is loudest,” said Hartwell.
“That is so,” said the officer. “The higher the water is, the more the air in the caves becomes pressed, and so the louder is the explosion. But this day the water has filled the caves to the roof, leaving no air in their depths to bellow. One of my men, on his patrol an hour ago, was overtaken by the tide at the foot of the cliffs at a place high above spring tide mark. He had to climb to safety. He did so only with difficulty. Had he been at Nitlisaye, nothing would have saved him.”
“What, are Nithsaye sands flooded? Impossible,” cried Hartwell.
“Flooded up to Tor, sir. I tell you the thing is a marvel!”
“All the more so, since there is no wind to add to the force of the tide,” said Wesley.
“True, sir; there was a strong breeze in the early morning that swept the sea-mist over the shore; but there has not been a capful since,” said the officer.
“But see the waves! Are they the effects of the early wind, think you, sir?” asked Wesley.
“Maybe; but if so, this also is past my experience of this coast, sir,” replied the man. “But I allow that when I was sailing with Captain Hawke in the West Indies I knew of the waters of the Caribbean Sea being stirred up like this in the dead calm before a hurricane that sent us on our beam ends, and one of our squadron on to the Palisades Reef at Port Royal.”
“Do you fear for a hurricane at this time?” asked Wesley.
“A gale, maybe; but no such hurricane as wrecks the island it swoops down on in the Leewards, sir. Oh, a hurricane in very deed! Our ship's cutter—a thirty-foot boat swung in on the iron davits—and lashed down to iron stanchions on the deck—was whisked adrift as if it had been an autumn leaf. I say it went five hundred fathom through the air and no man saw it fall. I saw a road twenty foot wide shorn through the dense forest for five miles as clean as with a scythe, as you go to Spanish Town—a round dozen of planters' houses and a stone church had once stood on that cutting. They were swept off, and not a stone of any one of them was ever found by mortal after. Oh, a hurricane, indeed! We need expect naught like that, by the mercy of Heaven, gentlemen; though I care not for the look of yon sun.”
They glanced upwards. The sun had the aspect of being seen through a slight haze, which made it seem of a brazen red, large and with its orb all undefined. It looked more like the red fire of a huge lighted brazier than the round sun, and all around it there was the gleam as of moving flames.
“Looks unhealthy—is't not so?” said the officer.
“There is a haze in the air; but the heat is none the less,” said Hartwell.
“I like it not, sirs. This aspect of the sun is part and parcel of some disturbance of nature that we would do well to be prepared for,” said the officer, shaking his head ominously.
“A disturbance of nature? What mean you? Have you been hearing of the fishing-boats that have been hauled up on the stones at the port for the past two days? Have you taken serious account of the foolishness of a man who calls himself a prophet?” asked Hartwell.
The officer laughed.
“Oh, I have heard much talk of the Prophet Pritchard,” he said. “But you surely do not reckon me as one of those poor wretches whom he has scared out of their lives by threatening them with the Day of Judgment to-morrow? Nay, sir; I placed my trust in a statement that begins with soundings, the direction of the wind and its force, the sail that is set, the last cast of the log, the bearings of certain landmarks, and the course that is being steered. My word for it, without such a preface, any statement is open to doubt.”
“And have you received such a statement in regard to your 'disturbance of nature,' sir?”
“That I have, sirs. Our cutter was cruising about a league off shore two nights ago, light breeze from west-nor'-west, sail set; mainsail, foresail, jib, speed three knots. Hour, two bells in the morning, Master in charge on deck, watch, larboard—names if necessary. Reports, night sultry, cloudless since second dog watch, attention called to sounds as of discharge of great guns in nor'-nor'west. Lasted some minutes, not continuous; followed by noise as of a huge wave breaking, or the fall of a cataract in same quarter. Took in jib, mainsail haul, stand by to lower gaff. No further sounds reported, but sea suddenly got up, though no change of wind, force or direction, and till four bells cutter sailed through waves choppy as if half a gale had been blowing. After four bells gradual calm. Nothing further to report till eight bells, when cutter, tacking east-nor'east, all sail set, gunner's mate found in it a dead fish. Master reports quantity of dead fish floating around. Took five aboard—namely, hake two, rock codling one, turbot two, rock codling with tail damaged. That's a statement we can trust, Mr. Hartwell. Yesterday it was supplemented by accounts brought by my men of the coast patrol, of quantities of dead fish washed ashore in various directions. And now comes this marvellous tide. Sirs, have not I some grounds for touching upon such a subject as 'a great disturbance of nature'?”
“Ample, sir, ample,” said Wesley. “Pray, does your West Indian experience justify you in coming to any conclusion in regard to these things?”
“I have heard of fish being killed by the action of a volcano beneath the sea,” said the officer. “I have heard it said that all the Leeward Islands are volcanos, though only one was firing broadsides the year that I was with my Lord Hawke. 'Twas at Martinique which we took from the French. Even before the island came in sight, our sails were black with dust and our decks were strewn with cinders. But when we drew nigh to the island and saw the outburst of molten rocks flying up to the very sky itself—sir, I say to you that when a man has seen such a sight as that, he is not disposed to shudder at all that a foolish fellow who has never sailed further than the Bristol Channel may prate about the Day of Judgment.”
“And to your thinking, sir, an earthquake or some such convulsion of nature hath taken place at the bottom of our peaceful Channel?” said Wesley.
“In my thinking, sir, yes. But I would not say that the convulsion was at the bottom of the Channel; it may have been an hundred leagues in the Atlantic. And more is to come, sirs; take my word for it, more is to come. Look at yonder sun; 'tis more ominous than ever. I shall look out for volcano dust in the next rain, and advise the near-, est station east'ard to warn all the fishing craft to make snug, and be ready for the worst. I should not be surprised to find that the tide is still rising, and so I wish you good-morning, sirs.”
He took off his hat and resumed his patrol of the coast.
“This is a day of surprises,” said Wesley.
“The story of the fish is difficult to believe, in spite of the cocoon of particulars in which it is enclosed,” said Hartwell. “The greatest marvel in a mariner's life seems to me to be his imagination and his readiness of resource when it comes to a question of memory. A volcano mountain in our Channel!”
“Do not condemn the master of the revenue cutter too hastily,” said Wesley. “His story corresponds very nearly to that narrated to me yesterday by Polwhele.”
“Is't possible? True, Polwhele was the only fisherman who went out to the reef three nights ago,” said Hartwell. “And the strange sounds——”
“He heard them also—he thought that they came from a frigate discharging a broadside of carronades.”
Hartwell was silent for some time. At last he said:
“I could wish that these mysterious happenings had come at some other time. Are you rested sufficiently in this place, sir? I am longing for a cool room, where I can think reasonably of all that I have seen and heard this day.”
Wesley rose from the hollow where he had made his seat and walked slowly down the sloping path toward the village. But long before they had reached the place of his sojourning, he became aware of a scene of excitement in the distance. The double row of straggling cottages that constituted the village of Porthawn they had left in the morning standing far beyond the long and steep ridge of shingle, at the base of which the wrack of high water lay, was now close to the water's edge. The little wharf alongside of which the fishing boats were accustomed to lie had been hauled up practically to the very doors of the houses. Scores of men and women were engaged in the work of hauling them still higher, not by the machinery of the capstans—the capstans were apparently submerged—but by hawsers. The sound of the sailors' “Heave ho!” came to the ear of Wesley and his companion a few seconds after they had seen the bending to the haul of all the people who were clinging to the hawsers as flies upon a thread. The shore was dark with men running with gear-tackles with blocks, while others were labouring along under the weight of spars and masts that had been hastily outstepped.
Mr. Hartwell was speechless with astonishment.
“It is indeed a day of wonder!” exclaimed Wes—ley. “A high tide? Ay; but who could have believed such an one possible? Should we not be doing well to lend them a hand in their emergency?”
He had to repeat his question before the other had recovered from his astonishment sufficiently to be able to reply.
“Such a tide! Such a tide!” he muttered. “What can it mean? Lend a hand? Surely—surely! Every hand is needed there.”
They were compelled to make a detour landward in order to reach the people, for the ordinary path was submerged, but they were soon in the midst of them, and bending to the work of hauling, until the drops fell from their faces, when the heavy boat at which they laboured had her bowsprit well-nigh touching the window of the nearest house.
Wesley dropped upon a stone and wiped his forehead, and some of the fishermen did the same, while others were loosing the tackles, in readiness to bind them on the next boat.
Nelly Polwhele was kneeling beside him in an instant—her hair had become unfastened, for she had been working hard with the other women, and fell in strands down her back and over her shoulders. Her face was wet.
“Oh, sir; this is overmuch for you!” she cried.
“Far overmuch, after all that you have gone through since morning. Pray rest you in the shade. There is a jug of cider cooling in a pail of water fresh drawn from the well. You need refreshment.”
He took her hand, smiling.
“I am refreshed, dear child,” he said. “I am refreshed.”
“Why should that man he treated different from the rest of us; tell me that,” came the voice of a man who had been watching them, and now stepped hastily forward. Wesley saw that he was Bennet. “Is there a man in the village who doesn't know that 'tis John Wesley and his friends that has brought this visitation upon us? Was there anything like to this before he came with his new-fangled preaching, drawing down the wrath of Heaven upon such as have been fool enough to join themselves to him? Was there any of you, men, that thought with trembling limbs and sweating foreheads of the Day of Judgment until John Wesley turned the head of that poor man Pritchard, and made him blaspheme, wrapping himself in Wesley's old cloak, and telling you that'twas the mantle of a prophet?”
Nelly had risen to her feet before his last sentence was spoken, but a moment afterward she sprang to one side with a cry. She was just in time to avoid the charge of a man on horseback. But Bennet was not so fortunate. Before he was aware of a danger threatening him, he felt himself carried off his feet, a strong man's hands grasping the collars of his coat, so that he was swung off the ground, dangling and scrawling like a puppet. Down the horse sprang into the water, until it was surging over the pommel of the saddle. Then, and only then, the rider loosed his hold, reining in his horse with one hand, while with the other he flung the man headforemost a couple of yards farther into the waves.
“The hound! the hound! that will cool his ardour!” cried Parson Rodney, backing his horse out of the water, while the people above him roared, and the man, coming to the surface like a grampus, struck out for a part of the beach most remote from the place where he had stood.
Wesley was on his feet and had already taken a step or two down the shingle, for Parson Rodney's attitude suggested his intention of preventing the man from landing, when he saw that Bennet was a strong swimmer, and that he, too, had put the same interpretation upon the rider's raising of his hunting crop.
“Sir,” said Parson Rodney, bringing his dripping horse beside him, “I grieve that any man in my parish should put such an affront upon you. Only so gross a wretch would have done so. Thank Heaven the fellow is not of Porthawn, nor a Cornishman at all. If you do not think that my simple rebuke has been enough, I am a Justice, and I promise you to send him to gaol for a month at next session.”
“Sir, you mean well by me,” said Wesley; “but I would not that any human being were placed in jeopardy of his life on my account.”
“That is because you are overgentle, sir,” said Rodney. “Thank Heaven, my fault does not lie in that direction.”
“Repent, repent, repent, while there is yet time In a few more hours Time shall be no more!” came a loud voice from the high ground above the bank.
Everyone turned and saw there the figure of Richard Pritchard, standing barehead in the scorching sun, his hands upraised and his hair unkept; and a curious nondescript garment made apparently of several sacks hastily stitched together, with no sleeves. On his feet he wore what looked like sandals—he had cut down the upper portion of his shoes, so that only the sole remained, and these were fastened to his feet by crossed pieces of tape. He was the prophet of the Bible illustration. It was plain that he had studied some such print and that he had determined that nothing should be lacking in his garb to make complete the part which he meant to play.
Up again went the long, lean, bare arms, and again came the voice:
“O men of Porthawn, now is the accepted time, now is the Day of Salvation. Yet a few more hours and Time shall be no more. Repent, repent, repent, while ye have time.”
There could be no doubt about the depth of the impression which the strange figure and his unusual garb produced upon the people.
There he stood on the high ground above the houses, the man who had prophesied the end of the world, while beneath them tumbled the waves of a sea where they had never seen sea water before! The occurrence, being so far outside their experience, had about it the elements of the supernatural—the aspect of a miracle. Was this the beginning of the end of all? they asked themselves. To these people the daily ebb and flow of the tide, ever going on before their eyes, was the type of a regularity that nothing could change; and never once had the water been forced, even under the influence of the strongest gale from the southwest, beyond the summit of the shingle-heap—never until this day.
It was an awful thing that had come to pass before their eyes, and while their brains were reeling beneath its contemplation there rang out that voice of warning. The man who had predicted an event that was not more supernatural in their eyes than the one which had come to their very feet, was there bidding them repent.
But strange to say, there was not one among the-people assembled there who made a motion—who cried out in conviction of the need for repentance, as hundreds had done upon every occasion of John. Wesley's preaching, although it had contained no element that, in the judgment of an ordinary person, would appeal with such force to the emotions of the villagers as did the scene in which Pritchard now played a part.
They remained unmoved—outwardly, however shrinking with terror some of them may have been. Perhaps it was they felt that the man had, in a way, threatened them physically, and they had a feeling that it would show cowardice on their part to betray their fear, or it may have been that, as was nearly always the case when a prophet came to a people, they attributed to the bearer of the messages of the ill the responsibility for the ills which he foretold—however it may have been, the people only glanced up at the weird figure, and made no move.
But the appearance of the man at that moment had the effect of making them forget the scene which had immediately preceded the sound of his voice. No one looked to see whether or not John Bennet had scrambled back to the beach or had gone under the waters.
“It is coming—it is coming: I hear the sound of the hoofs of the pale Horse—yonder is the red Horse spoken of by the prophet at Patmos, but the White Horse is champing his bit. I hear the clink of the steel, and Death is his rider. He cometh with fire and brimstone. Repent—repent—repent!”
“I have a mind to make the fellow repent of his impudence,” said Parson Rodney. “The effrontery of the man trying to make me play a part in his quackery. I wonder how this water-finder would find the water if I were to give him the ducking I gave to the other?”
“You would do wrong, sir,” said Wesley. “But I feel that I have no need to tell you so: your own good judgment tells you that yonder man is to be pitied rather than punished.”
“Oh, if that is the view you take of the matter, you may be sure that I'll not interfere,” cried the other. “The fellow may quack or croak or crow for aught I care.'Twas for you I was having thought. But I've no intention of constituting my humble self your champion. I wish you well; and I know that if the world gets over the strain of Monday, we shall never see you in our neighbourhood again.”
“The elements shall melt with fervent heat. You feel it—you feel it on your faces to-day: I foretold it, and I was sent to cry unto all that have ears to hear, 'Repent—repent—repent'!”
“The fellow has got no better manner than a real prophet,” laughed Parson Rodney; but there was not much merriment in his laughter. “I have a mind to have him brought before me as an incorrigible rogue and vagabond,” he continued. “An hour or twain in the stocks would make him think more civilly of the world. If he becomes bold enough to be offensive to you, Mr. Wesley, give me a hint of it, and I'll promise you that I'll make him see more fire and brimstone than he ever did in one of his ecstatic moods; and so good-day to you, sir.”
He put his horse to a trot, and returned the salutes of the men who were standing idly watching Pritchard in his very real sackcloth.
But he had scarcely ridden past them when he turned his horse and called out:
“Wherefore are you idle, good men? Do you mean to forsake the remainder of your smacks?”
A few of the fishermen looked at one another; they shook their heads; one of them wiped his forehead.
“'Twill be all the same after Monday, Parson,” said that man.
“You parboiled lobster-grabber!” cried the Parson. “Do you mean to say that you have the effrontery to believe that addle-pate up there rather than a clergyman of the Church of England? Look at him. He's not a man.'Tis a poor cut torn from, a child's picture Bible that he is! Do you believe that the world would come to an end without your properly ordained clergyman giving you a hint of it? Go on with your work, if you are men. Repent? Ay, you'll all repent when 'tis too late, if you fail to haul up your boats so that their backs get not broken on that ridge. If you feel that you must repent, do it hauling. And when you've done your work, come up to the Rectory and cool your throats with a jug of cider, cool from the cellar, mind.”
“There shall be no more sea,” came the voice of the man on the mound; it was growing appreciably hoarser.
“No more sea?” shouted the parson. “That's an unlucky shot of yours, my addle-pated prophet; 'tis too much sea that we be suffering from just here.”
Wesley had not reseated himself. He put his hand upon Mr. Hartwell's arm. The latter understood what he meant. They walked away together.
“I have seen nothing sadder for years,” said Wesley. “I have been asking myself if I am to blame. Should not I have been more careful in regard to that unhappy man?”
“If blame is to be attached to any it is to be attached to those who recommended the man to you, and I was among them,” said Hartwell. “I recall how you were not disposed to accept him into our fellowship by reason of his work with the divining rod; but we persuaded you against your judgment. I, for one, shall never forgive myself.”
“Was ever aught so saddening as that travesty of the most solemn event?” said Wesley. “And then the spectacle of that well-meaning but ill-balanced man! A clergyman of our Church—you saw him turn to mock the wretch? He made a jest upon the line that has never failed to send a thrill through me: 'No more sea.' Shocking—shocking!... Friend, I came hither with the full intention of administering a rebuke to Pritchard—of openly letting it be understood that we discountenanced him. But I did not do so to-day, and I am glad of it. However vain the man may be—however injuriously he may affect our aims among the people—I am still glad that I was turned away from saying a word against him.”
Mr. Hartwell was too practical a man to look at the matter in the same light. But he said nothing further about Pritchard. When he spoke, which he did after a time, it was about Bennet. He asked Wesley if he could guess why the man had spoken to him so bitterly. Why should the man bear him a grudge?
Wesley mentioned that Bennet had come upon him when he was walking with Polwhele's daughter from the Mill.
“Ah, that is the form of his madness—he becomes insanely jealous of anyone whom he sees near that girl. But one might have thought that you at least—oh, absurdity could go no further! But a jealous man is a madman; he is incapable of looking at even the most ordinary incident except through green glasses. You are opposed to clergymen marrying, are you not, Mr. Wesley? I have heard of your book——-”
“I wrote as I was persuaded at that time,” replied Wesley. “But more recently—I am not confident that I did not make a mistake in my conclusions. I am not sure that it is good for a man to be alone; and a clergyman, of all men, needs the sympathy—the sweet and humane companionship of a woman.”
“True, sir; but if a clergymen makes a mistake in his choice of a wife, there can be no question that his influence declines; and so many men of your cloth wreck themselves on the quicksand of matrimony. I daresay that 'tis your own experience of this that keeps you single, though you may have modified your original views on the subject. Strange, is't not, that we should find ourselves discussing such a point at this time? But this seems to be the season of strange things, and 'twould be the greatest marvel of all if we ourselves were not affected. Is it the terrible heat, think you, that has touched the heads of those two men?”
“I scarce know what I should think,” said Wesley. “The case of Pritchard is the more remarkable. Only now it occurred to me that there may be a strange affinity between the abnormal in nature and the mind of such a man as he.'Twould be idle to contend that he has not been able as a rule to say where water is to be found on sinking a shaft; I have heard several persons testify to his skill in this particular—if it may be called skill. Does not his possession of this power then suggest that he may be so constituted that his senses may be susceptible of certain vague suggestions which emanate from the earth, just as some people catch ague—I have known of such in Georgia—when in the neighbourhood of a swamp, while others remain quite unaffected in health?”
“That is going too far for me, sir,” said Hartwell. “I do not need to resort to anything more difficult to understand than vanity to enable me to understand how Pritchard has changed. The fellow's head has been turned—that's all.”
“That explanation doth not wholly satisfy me,” said Wesley. “I think that we have at least some proof that he was sensible of something abnormal in Nature, and this sensibility acting upon his brain disposed him to take a distorted view of the thing. His instinct in this matter may have been accurate; but his head was weak. He receives an impression of something strange, and forthwith he begins to talk of the Day of Judgment, and his foolish vanity induces him to think of himself as a prophet. The Preventive officer thinks that there hath been an earthquake. Now there can, I think, be no doubt that Pritchard was sensible of its coming; Pol-whele told you yesterday that he had predicted an earthquake in the sea, although it seemed that his illiteracy was accountable for this: and now there comes this remarkable tide—the highest tide that the memory of man has known.”
“You have plainly been giving the case of Pritchard much of your attention,” said Hartwell; “but I pray you to recall his account of the vision which he said came to him when he fell into that trance. 'Twas just the opposite to a high tide—'twas such an ebbing of the water as left bare the carcase of the East Indiaman that went ashore on the Dog's Teeth reef forty years ago.”
“True; but to my way of thinking it matters not whether 'twas a prodigious ebb or a prodigious flow that he talked of so long as he was feeling the impression of the unusual—of the extraordinary. Mind you, I am only throwing out a hint of a matter that may become, if approached in a proper spirit, a worthy subject for sober philosophical thought. God forbid that I should take it upon me to say at this moment that the power shown by that man is from the Enemy of mankind, albeit I have at times found myself thinking that it could come from no other source.”
“You are too lenient, I fear, Mr. Wesley. For myself, I believe simply that the man's head has been turned. Is't not certain that a devil enters into such men as are mad, and have we not proof that witches and warlocks have sometimes the perverted gift of prophecy, through the power of their master, the Old Devil?”
“I cannot gainsay it, my brother, and it is because of this you say, that I am greatly perplexed.”
They had been walking very slowly, for the heat of the day seemed to have increased, and they were both greatly exhausted. Before entering Mr. Hartwell's house they stood for a short time looking seaward. There, as before, the waves danced under the rays of the sun, although not a breath of air stirred between the sea and the sky. The canopy of the heaven was blue, but it suggested the blue of hard steel rather than that of the transparent sapphire or that of the soft mass of a bed of forget-me-nots, or of the canopy of clematis which clambered over the porch.
The sun that glared down from the supreme height was like to no other sun they had ever seen. The haze on its disc, to which the Preventive officer had drawn their attention an hour earlier, had been slowly growing in the meantime, until now it was equal to four diameters of the orb itself, and it was so permeated with the rays that it seemed part of the sun itself. There that mighty furnace seethed with intolerable fire, and so singular was the haze that one, glancing for a moment upward with hand on forehead, seemed to see the huge tongues of flame that burst forth now and again as they do beneath a copper cauldron on the furnace of the artificer.
But this was not all, for at a considerable distance from the molten mass, which had the sun for its core, there was a wide ring apparently of fire. Though dull as copper for the most part, yet at times there was a glow as of living and not merely reflected flame, at parts of the brazen circle, and flashes seemed to go from the sun to this cincture, conveying the impression of an enormous shield, having the sun as the central boss of shining brass, on which fiery darts were striking, flying off again to the brass binding of the targe.
“Another marvel!” said Wesley; “but I have seen the dike more than once before. Once 'twas on the Atlantic, and the master of our ship, who was a mariner of experience, told me that that outer circle was due to the sun shining through particles of moisture. Hold up a candle in the mist and you have the same thing.”
“I myself have seen it more than once; 'tis not a marvel, though it has appeared on a day of marvels,” said Hartwell; and forthwith they entered the house.
They were both greatly exhausted, the fact being that before setting out for the preaching in the early morning they had taken no more than a glass of milk and a piece of bread, and during the seven hours that had elapsed they had tasted nothing, though the day had been a most exhausting one.
In a very few minutes the cold dinner, with the salad, which had been in readiness for their return, found them grateful; and after partaking of it Wesley retired to his room.
He threw himself upon a couch that stood under the window; a group of trees, though birch and not very bosky, grew so close to the window that they had made something of a shade to the room since morning, so that it was the coolest in the house. It was probably this sense of coolness that refreshed him so far as to place him within the power of sleep. He had thought it impossible when he entered the house that he should be able to find such a relief, exhausted as he had been. But now he had scarcely put his head on the pillow before he was asleep.
Several hours had passed before he opened his eyes again. He was conscious that a great change of some sort, that he could not at once define, had taken place. The room was in shadow where before it had been lighted by flecks of sunshine, but this was not the change which appealed to him with striking force; nor was it the sense of being refreshed, of which he was now aware. There was a curious silence in the world—the change had something to do with the silence. He felt as he had done in the parlour of Ruthallion Mill when he had been talking to the miller and the machinery had suddenly stopped for the breakfast hour. That was his half-awakened thought.
The next moment he was fully awake, and he knew what had happened: when he had fallen asleep the sound of the waves had been in his ears without cessation, and now the sea was silent.
He thought that he had never before been in such a silence. It seemed strange, mysterious, full of awful suggestions. It seemed to his vivid imagination that the world, which a short time before had been full of life, had suddenly swooned away. The hush was the hush of death. The silence was the silence of the tomb. “'Tis thus,” he thought, “that a man awakens after death—in a place of awful silences.”
And then he felt as if all the men in the world had been cut off in a moment, leaving him the only man alive.
It continued unbroken while he lay there. It became a nightmare silence—an awful palpable thing like a Sphinx—a blank dumbness—a benumbing of all Nature—a sealing up of all the world as in the hard bondage of an everlasting Winter.
He sprang from his couch unable to endure the silence any longer. He went to the window and looked out, expecting to see the flat unruffled surface of the channel, where the numberless waves had lately been, sparkling with intolerable, brilliance, and every wave sending its voice into the air to join the myriad-voiced chorus that the sea made.
He looked out and started back; then he drew up the blind and stared out in amazement, for where the sea had been there was now no sea.
He threw open the window and looked out. Far away in the utter distance he saw what seemed like a band of glittering crimson on the horizon. Looking further round and to the west he saw that the sun was more than halfway down the slope of the heavens in that quarter and it was of the darkest crimson in colour—large, but no longer fiery.
Then there came a murmur to his ears—the murmur of a multitude of people; and above this sound came a hoarse, monotonous voice, crying:
“I heard one say to me: 'There shall be no sea—there shall be no more sea'; and the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible Day of the Lord. Repent—repent—repent!”
Far away he could see the figure of the man. He stood on the summit of the cliff beyond the path, and, facing the sinking sun, he was crimson from head to foot. Seen at such a distance and in that light he looked an imposing figure—a figure that appealed to the imagination, and not lacking in those elements which for ages have been associated with the appearance of a fearless prophet uplifting a lean right arm and crying “Thus saith the Lord.” Wesley listened and heard his cry:
“There shall be no more sea! Repent—repent—repent!”
0223
What think you now, sir?” Hartwell asked of Wesley when the latter had descended the stairs and entered the little parlour of the house.
“I am too greatly amazed to think,” replied Wesley. “But since you put thinking into my head, I would ask you if you think it unnatural that a great ebb should follow an unusually high tide?”
It was plain that Hartwell was greatly perturbed.
“Unnatural? Why, has not everything that has happened for the past three days been unnatural?” he cried. “Sir, I am, I thank God, a level-headed man. I have seen some strange things in my life, both in the mines and when seafaring; I thought that naught could happen to startle me, but I confess that this last—I tell you, sir, that I feel now as if I were in the midst of a dream. My voice sounds strange to myself; it seems to come from someone apart from me—nay, rather from myself, but outside myself.”
“'Tis the effect of the heat, dear friend,” said Wesley. “You should have slept as I did.”
“I did sleep, sir; what I have been asking myself is 'Am I yet awake?' I have had dreams before like to this one—dreams of watching the sea and other established things that convey to us all ideas of permanence and regularity, melting away before my very eyes—one dread vision showed me Greta Cliff crumbling away like a child's mound built on the sand—crumbling away into the sea, and then the sea began to ebb and soon was on the horizon. Now, I have been asking myself if I am in the midst of that same dream again. Can it be possible? Can it be possible?”
He clapped his hand to his forehead and hastened to the window, whence he looked out. Almost immediately he returned to Wesley, saying:
“I pray you to inform me, sir, if this is the truth or a dream—is it really the case that the sea has ebbed so that there is naught left of it?”
“You are awake, my brother,” said Wesley, “and 'tis true that the sea hath ebbed strangely; but from the upper windows 'tis possible to see a broad band of it in the distance. I beseech of you to lie down on your bed and compose yourself. This day has tried you greatly.”
The other stared at him for a few moments and then walked slowly away, muttering:
“A mystery—a mystery! Oh, the notion of Dick Pritchard being a true prophet! Was it of such stuff as this the old prophets were made? God forgive me if I erred in thinking him one of the vain fellows. Mr. Wesley's judgment was not at fault; he came hither to preach against him; but not a word did he utter of upbraiding or reproof.”
Wesley saw that the man was quite overcome. Up to this moment he had shown himself to be possessed of a rational mind, and one that was not easily put off its balance. He had only a few hours before been discussing Pritchard in a sober and unemotional spirit; but this last mystery had been too much for him: the disappearance of the sea, which had lately climbed up to the doors of Porthawn, had unhinged him and thrown him off his balance. If the phenomenon had occurred at any other time—under any less trying conditions of weather—he might have been able to observe it with equanimity; but the day had been, as Wesley said, a trying one. The intense heat was of itself prostrating, and demoralising even to Wesley himself, and he had schooled himself to be unaffected by any conditions of weather.
Suddenly Hartwell turned toward his visitor, saying:
“And if the man was entrusted to predict the falling away of the sea, is there anyone that will say that the remainder of his prophecy will not be fulfilled?”
“I entreat of you, brother, to forbear asking yourself any further questions until you have had a few hours' sleep,” said Wesley.
“What signifies a sleep now if before this time to-morrow the end of all things shall have come?” Hartwell cried almost fiercely. “Nay, sir, I shall wait with the confidence of a Christian; I shall not be found as were the foolish virgins—asleep and with unlighted lamps. There will be no slumber for me. I shall watch and pray.”
“Let us pray together, my brother,” said Wesley, laying his hand on the man's shoulder affectionately. He perceived that he was not in a mood to be reasoned with.
It was at this moment that the door was opened and there entered the room the miller and Jake 'Pullsford.
Wesley welcomed their coming; he had hopes that they would succeed in persuading his host to retire; but before they had been in the room for more than a few minutes Hartwell had well-nigh become himself again.
The newcomers were not greatly affected by anything that had happened. They were only regretful that the mist of the morning had prevented them from reaching the Red Tor in time for the preaching. They had started together, but had stopped upon the way to help a party of their friends who were in search of still another party, and when the strayed ones had been found they all had thought it prudent to remain at a farm where they had dined.
“On our way hither we met with one who had been to the preaching,” said Jake. “He told us something of what we had missed.”
“Were you disappointed to learn that no reference had been made to the very matter that brought me back to you?” asked Wesley.
Jake did not answer immediately. It was apparent that he had his own views on this matter, and that he had been expounding them to his companion on their walk from the farm to the coast.
“Mr. Wesley, 'tis plain to me that the skill at divination shown by that man comes from below, not from above,” he said. “And do you suppose that our enemies will take back any of the foul things they have said about our allying ourselves with sorcery when they hear of the wonderful things that are now happening?”
“Brother,” said Wesley, “if the principles of the Truth which we have been teaching are indeed true, they will survive such calumnies—nay, they will take the firmer hold upon all who have heard us by reason of such calumnies. The gold of the Truth has oft been tried by the fire of calumny and proved itself to be precious.”
“You saw the man play-acting in his sackcloth?” said the carrier.
Wesley shook his head sadly.
“'Twas deplorable!” he said. “And yet I dare not even now speak against him—no, not a word.”
“What, sir, you do not believe that he is a sorcerer and a soothsayer?” cried Jake.
“I have not satisfied myself that he is either,” replied Wesley. “More than once since I saw how much evil was following on his predictions I have felt sure that he was an agent of our Arch-enemy, but later I have not felt quite so confident in my judgment. No, friend, I shall not judge him. He is in the hands of God.”
“And I agree with Mr. Wesley,” said the miller.
Jake Pullsford, with his hands clasped behind him and his head craned forward, was about to speak, when Hal Holmes entered the room. He was excited.
“Have you seen it?” he cried before he had greeted anyone. “Have you seen it—the vision of his trance at the Mill—the tide sliding away as it hath never done before within the memory of man?—the discovery of the bare hollow basin of the sea? Have you been within sight of the Dog's Teeth?”
“We—Mr. Hartwell and I—have not been out of doors for six hours; but we are going now,” said Wesley. “We have seen some of the wonders that have happened; we would fain witness all.”
“Oh, sir,” said the blacksmith, “this one is the first that I have seen, and seeing it has made me think that we were too hasty in condemning poor Dick Pritchard. We need your guidance, sir. Do you hold that a man may have the gift of prophecy in this Dispensation, without being a sorcerer, and the agent of the Fiend?”
“Alas! 'tis not I that can be your guide in such a matter,” said Wesley. “You must join with me in seeking for guidance from above. Let us go forth and see what is this new wonder.”
“'Tis the vision of his trance—I saw it with these eyes as I passed along the high ground above the Dog's Teeth Reef—the reef was well-nigh bare and naked,” said Hal. “Who is there of us that could tell what the bottom of the sea looked like? We knew what the simple slopes of the beach were—the spaces where the tide was wont to ebb and flow over are known to all; but who before since the world began saw those secret hidden deeps where the lobsters lurk and crabs half the size of a man's body—I saw them with these eyes a while agone—and the little runnels—a thousand of them, I believe, racing through channels in the slime as if they were afraid to be left behind when the sea was ebbing out of sight—and the sun turned all into the colour of blood! What does it all mean, Mr. Wesley—I do not mean the man's trance-dream, but the thing itself that hath come to pass?”
“We shall go forth and be witnesses of all,” said Wesley.
He was not excited; but this could not be said of his companions; they betrayed their emotions in various ways. Mr. Hartwell and the miller were silent and apparently stolid; but the carrier and the smith talked.
Very few minutes sufficed to bring them to the summit of the cliff that commanded a full view seaward. At high tide the waves just reached the base of these cliffs, and the furthest ebb only left bare about a hundred feet of sand and shingle, with large smooth pebbles in ridges beyond the groins of the out-jutting rocks. But now it was a very different picture from that of the ordinary ebb that stretched away to the horizon under the eyes of our watchers.
The sandy breadth, with its many little ribs made by the waves, sloped into a line of sparse sea weed, tangled tufts of green and brown, and some long and wiry, and others flat with large and leathery bosses, like the studs of a shield. But beyond this space the rocks of the sea-bed began to show, There they were in serrated rows—rocks that had never before been seen by human eyes. Some lay in long sharp ridges, with here and there a peak of a miniature mountain, and beyond these lines of ridges there was a broad tableland, elevated in places and containing huge hollow basins brimming over with water, out of which every now and again a huge fish leaped, only to find itself struggling among the thick weeds. Further away still there was a great breadth of ooze, and then peak beyond peak of rocks, to which huge, grotesque weeds were clinging, having the semblance of snakes coiled round one another and dying in that close embrace.
Looking over these strange spaces was like having a bird's-eye view of an unexplored country of mountains and tablelands and valleys intersected by innumerable streams. The whole breadth of sea-bed was veined with little streams hurrying away after the lost sea, and all the air was filled with the prattling and chattering that went on through these channels.
And soon one became aware of a strange motion of struggling life among the forests of sea weed. At first it seemed no more than a quivering among the giant growths; but soon one saw the snake's head and the narrow shoulders of a big conger eel, from five to seven feet long, pushed through the jungle of ooze, to be followed by the wriggling body; there were congers by the hundred, and the hard-dying dog-fishes by the score, flapping and forcing their way from stream to stream. Stranded dying fish of all sorts made constant movements where they lay, and whole breadths of the sea-bed were alive with hurrying, scurrying crabs and lobsters and cray-fish. Some of these were of enormous size, patriarchs of the deep that had lurked for ages far out of reach of the fisherman's hook, and had mangled many a creel.
The weirdness of this unparalleled picture was immeasurably increased by its colouring, for over all there was spread what had the effect of a delicate crimson gauze. The whole of the sea-bed was crimson, for it was still dripping wet, and glistening with reflections of the red western sky. At the same time the great heat of the evening was sucking the moisture out of the spongy sea weeds, and there it remained in the form of a faint steam permeated with the crimson light.
And through all that broad space under the eyes of the watchers on the cliff there was no sign of a human being. They might have been the explorers of stout Cortez who stared at the Pacific from that peak in Darien. It was not until they had gone in silence for a quarter of a mile along the cliff path that they saw where the people of the village had assembled. The shore to the westward came into view and they saw that a crowd was there. The sound of the voices of the crowd came to their ears, and above it the hard, high monotone like that of a town crier uttering the words that Wesley had heard while yet in his room:
“There shall be no more sea. Repent—repent—repent.”
Once more they stood and looked down over the part of the coast that had just been disclosed—the eastern horn of Greta Bay, but no familiar landmark was to be seen; on the contrary, it seemed to them that they were looking down upon a new and curious region. The line of cliffs was familiar to their eyes, but what was that curious raised spine—that long sharp ridge stretching outwards for more than a mile on the glistening shore?
And what was that strange object—that huge bulk lying with one end tilted into the air on one shoulder of that sharp ridge?
All at once Wesley had a curious feeling that he had seen all that before. The sight of that mighty bulk and the knowledge that it was the heavy ribbed framework of a large ship seemed familiar. But when or how had he seen it?
It was not until Hartwell spoke that he understood how this impression had come to him.
“You see it—there—there—just as he described it to us when he awoke from his trance?” said Hartwell.
And there indeed it was—the fabric of the East Indiaman that had been wrecked years before on the Dog's Teeth Reef, and there was the Dog's Teeth Reef laid bare for the first time within the memory of man!
It was the skeleton of a great ship. The outer timbers had almost wholly disappeared—after every gale for years before some portion of the wreckage had come ashore and had been picked up by the villagers; but the enormous framework to which the timbers of the hull had been bolted had withstood the action of the waves, for the ship had sunk into a cradle of rock that held her firmly year after year. There it lay like the skeleton of some tremendous monster of the awful depths of the sea—the Kraken—a survival of the creatures that lived before the Flood. The three stumps of masts which stood up eight or ten feet above the line of bulwarks gave a curious suggestion to a creature's deformed legs, up in the air while it lay stranded on its curved back.
And the crimson sunset shot through the huge ribs of this thing and spread their distorted shadows sprawling over the sands at the base of the reef and upon the faces of the people who stood looking up at this wonder.
“There it is—just as he saw it in his trance!” said Hal Holmes. “He saw it and related it to us afterward. What are we to say to all this, Mr. Wesley? All that he predicted so far has come to pass. Are we safe in saying that yonder sun will be setting over a blazing world to-morrow?”
“I do not dare to say anything,” replied Wesley. “I have already offered my opinion to Mr. Hartwell, which is that there may be a kind of sympathy between the man and the earth, by whose aid he has been able to discover the whereabouts of a spring in the past and to predict these marvels of tides.”
“That is a diviner's skill derived from the demons that we know inhabit the inside of the earth,” cried Jake Pullsford. “He has ever had communication with these unclean things.”
“That works so far as the tides are concerned,” said the smith. “It stands to reason that the demons of the nether world must know all about the ebb and flow; but how did he foresee the laying bare of yonder secret?” He pointed to the body; of the wreck.
“Was it not the same demons that dragged the ship to destruction on the reef, and is't not within their province to know all that happens below the surface of the sea?” said the carrier.
“Doubtless,” said the smith. “But I find it hard to think of so moderately foolish a fellow as Dick Pritchard being hand in glove with a fiend of any sort, and not profiting more by the traffic—as to his secular circumstances, I should say.”
“And I find it hard to think of him as urging men to repent, if he be an ally of the Evil One,” said Hartwell.
“This is not a case in which the wisdom of man can show itself to be other than foolishness,” said Wesley. “But I am now moved to speak to the people who have come hither to see the wonder. Let us hasten onward to the highest ground. My heart is full.”
He went on with his friends to a short spur of the cliff about twenty feet above the shingle where groups of men and women were straying; most of them had been down to the wreck and nearly all were engaged in discussing its marvellous appearance. Some of the elder men were recalling for the benefit of the younger the circumstances of the loss of the great East Indiaman, and the affluence that had come to a good many houses in the Port, when the cargo began to be washed ashore before the arrival of the Preventive men and the soldiery from Falmouth.
But while the larger proportion of the people were engaged in discussing, without any sense of awe, the two abnormal tides and the story of the wreck, there were numbers who were clearly terror-stricken at the marvels and at the prospect of the morrow. A few women were clinging together and moaning without cessation, a girl or two wept aloud, a few shrieked hysterically, and one began to laugh and gibber, pointing monkey hands in the direction of the wreck. But further on half a dozen young men and maidens were engaged in a boisterous and an almost shocking game preserved in Cornwall and some parts of Wales through the ages that had elapsed since it was practised by a by-gone race of semi-savages. They went through it now in the most abandoned and barbaric way, dancing like Bacchanalians in a ring, with shouts and wild laughter.
John Wesley, who knew what it was to be human, had no difficulty in perceiving that these wretched people were endeavouring in such excesses to conceal the terror they felt, and he was not surprised to find a number of intoxicated men clinging together and singing wildly in the broad moorland space that lay on the landward side of the cliffs.
“This is the work of Pritchard the water-finder, and will you say that 'tis not of the Devil?” cried Jake Pullsford.
“Poor wretches! Oh, my poor brothers and sisters!” cried Wesley. “Our aim should be to soothe them, not to denounce them. Never have they been subjected to such a strain as that which has been put upon them. I can understand their excesses. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die'—that is the cry which comes from all hearts that have not been regenerated.'Tis the cry of the old Paganism which once ruled the world, before the sweet calm of Christianity brought men from earth to heaven. I will speak to them.”
He had reached the high ground with his friends. There was a sudden spur on the range of low cliffs just where the people were most numerous. They had come from all quarters to witness the wonders of this lurid eve, and, as was the case at Wesley's preaching, everyone was asking of everyone else how so large an assembly could be brought together in a neighbourhood that was certainly not densely populated. On each side of him and on the beach below there were crowds, and on every face the crimson of the sinking sun flamed. He went out to the furthest point of the cliff-spur and stood there silent, with uplifted arms.
In a moment the whisper spread:
“Mr. Wesley has come—Mr. Wesley is preaching!”
There was the sound of many feet trampling down the pebbles of the beach. The people flowed toward him like a great wave slowly moving over that place now forsaken by the waves. The young men and maidens who had been engaged in that fierce wild dance among the wiry herbage flocked toward him, their faces shining from their exertions, and stood catching their breath. The old men who had been staring stolidly through the great ribs of the hulk, slouched through the ooze and stood sideways beneath him, their hands, like the gnarled joints of a thorn, scooped behind their ears lest they should lose a word. The women, with disordered hair, tears on their faces, the terror of anticipation in their eyes, waited on the ground, some kneeling, others seated in various postures.
Then there came a deep hush.
He stood there, a solitary figure, black against the crimson background of the western sky, his arms still upraised. It might have been a statue carved out of dark marble that stood on the spur of the cliff.
And then he began to speak.
His hands were still uplifted in the attitude of benediction; and the words that came from him were the words of the Benediction.
“The Peace of God which passeth all understanding.”
The Peace of God—that was the message which he delivered to that agitated multitude, and it fell upon their ears, soothing all who heard and banishing their fears. He gave them the message of the Father to His children—a message of love, of tenderness—a promise of protection, of infinite pity, of a compassion that knew no limits—outliving the life of the world, knowing no change through all ages, the only thing that suffered no change—a compassion which, being eternal, would outlive Time itself—a compassion which brought with it every blessing that man could know—nay, more—more than man could think of; a compassion that brought with it the supreme blessing that could come to man—the Peace of God which passeth all understanding!
He never travelled outside this message of Divine Peace, although he spoke for a full hour.
And while he spoke the meaning of that message fell upon the multitude who listened. They felt that Peace of which he spoke falling gently upon them as cold dew at the close of a day of intolerable heat. They realised what it meant to them. The Peace descended upon them, and they were sensible of its presence. The dread that had been hanging over them all the day was swept away as the morning mist had been dispersed. The apprehension of the Judgment was lost in the consciousness of a Divine Love surrounding them. They seemed to have passed from an atmosphere of foetid vapours into that of a meadow in the Spring time. They drank deep draughts of its sweetness and were refreshed.
When he had begun to speak the sun was not far from setting in the depths of a crimson sky, and before he had spoken for half an hour the immense red disc, magnified by the vapours in the air, was touching the horizon. With its disappearance the colour spread higher up the sky and drifted round to the north, gradually changing to the darkest purple. Even then it was quite possible for the people to see one another's features distinctly in the twilight, but half an hour later the figure of the preacher was but faintly seen through the dimness that had fallen over the coast. The twilight had been almost tropical in its brevity, and the effect of the clear voice of many modulations coming out of the darkness was strange, and to the ears that heard it, mysterious. Just before it ceased there swept upon the faces of his listeners a cool breath of air. It came with a suddenness that was startling. During all the day there had not been a breath. The heat had seemed to be so solid, and now the movement of the air gave the impression of the passing of a mysterious Presence. It was as if the wings of a company of angels were winnowing the air, as they fled by, bringing with them the perfume of their Paradise for the refreshing of the people of the earth. Only for a few minutes that cool air was felt, but for that time it was as if the Peace of God had been made tangible.
When the preacher ended with the words with which he had begun, the silence was like a sigh.
The people were on their knees. There was no one that did not feel that God was very nigh to him.
And the preacher felt it most deeply of all. There was a silence of intense solemnity, before the voice was heard once more speaking to Heaven in prayer—in thanksgiving for the Peace that had come upon this world from above.
He knew how fully his prayer had been answered when he talked to the young men and maidens who had been among his hearers. The excitement of the evening had passed away from all of them. At the beginning of his preaching there had been the sound of weeping among them. At first it had been loud and passionate; but gradually it had subsided until at the setting of the sun the terror which had possessed them gave place to the peace of the twilight, and now there was not one of them that did not feel the soothing influence that comes only when the angel of the evening hovers with shadowy outspread wings over the world.
They all walked slowly to their homes; some belonged to Porthawn and others to the inland villages of the valley of the Lana, as far away as Ruthallion, and the light breeze that had been felt during the preaching became stronger and less intermittent now. It was cool and gracious beyond expression, and it brought with it to the ears of all who walked along the cliffs the soothing whisper of the distant sea. The joyous tidings came that the sea was returning, and it seemed that with that news came also the assurance that the cause for dread was over and past.
And all this time the preacher had made no allusion to the voice that had sounded along the shore in the early part of the evening predicting the overthrow of the world. All that he had done was to preach the coming of Peace.
“You may resume your journeying, Mr. Wesley, as soon as you please. May he not, friend Pullsford?” said Hartwell when he had returned to his house. “There is no need for us to keep Mr. Wesley among us when we know that he is anxious to resume his preaching further west. You never mentioned the man's name, sir, and yet you have done all—nay, far more than we thought it possible for you to accomplish.”
“There is no need for me to tarry longer,” replied Wesley. “But I pray of you, my dear friends, not to think that I do not recognise the need there was for me to return to you with all speed. I perceived the great danger that threatened us through Pritchard, and I was glad that you sent for me. I hope you agree with me in believing that that danger is no longer imminent.”