Amercement

“ I saw the fate of all was to be decided by the very next wave that was rolling in; and apprehensive that some woman, child, or helpless man would lay hold of me, and entangle my arms or legs and weigh me down, I cried to my servants, both in Arabic and English, We are all lost; if you can swim, follow me; I then let myself down in the face of the wave. Whether that, or the next, filled the boat, I know not, as I went to leeward to make my distance as great as possible. ”

“ This is a place for all men to cast anchor.' But when the tide is going out, you see how you have been deceived. Here is a reef that would wreck a navy; here is a jagged and cruel rock, and there another and another. With every one, you say to yourself, surely this is the last. ”

“ The furious tide in elemental fight
Is lashing fierce and hoar with giant might,—
The bleeding shores the tale shall tell the main!
Brave sailor, reeling in thy storm-drunk bark,
Blinded by sheeted rain blown tempest-wild,
And vexed with roaring darkness round about!
The heaven-sent vision fair of wife and child
Calm seated at love's hearth, with face ahark,
Makes thee divine amid the awful rout. ”

“ I could have prayed for such another squall as I have described to burst upon us for the life that would come to the spirit out of the lightning flash, the roar of thunder, the shriek of wind, the fierce blow of the black surge, and the tempestuous hiss of its dissolving spume. I cudgelled my wits for a solution of the voice, but to no purpose. It was ridiculous to suppose that a man lay hidden below. For what sailor of the crew but would not be quickly missed? ”

“ And even, as suddenly as the bravest and fleetest ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the sea, have been struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so, do some lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and disaster, suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into death. ”

“ When the lightning strikes one of us it strikes both: you had hardly arrived at the port of embarkation when I got my papers to start for Rome, and I am waiting every moment to be told where to take ship. ”

“ So that when the heathen, on the arrival of their king, were preparing for a fourth attack with all their forces, the rising sea covered with its waves the whole of the shore, and floated the ship, which sailed into the deep. ”

“ Thrusts out an arm that well defies
The frantic ocean's shock;
And from its point the sunken reef
Runs out a mile or more,
Where many a ship has come to grief
[Pg 120]
When breaking breakers roar.
Long, long ago, in sudden wrath
A storm burst on this land;
It caught a fleet within its path—
An admiral in command.
For three black days they fought the gale,
Then one by one they wore—
And reft of spar and stripped of sail
Went smashing on that shore.
Where red and rough the land-slip beach
Is touched by tiny waves—
Beyond the winter breaker's reach
They dug their shallow graves ”

“ Borne onward at the mercy of the waves—possessing just sufficient control over the boat to keep her head in the proper direction—now losing sight altogether of our consort, and now hanging on the top of the wave while she lay directly under us, we passed the moments in a succession of hopes and fears which no human pen can adequately describe. ”

“ And the crew sinks beneath the infuriate surge.
There find the weak an early grave,
While youthful strength the whelming wave
Repels; and labouring for the land,
With shorten'd breath and upturn'd eyes,
Sees the rough shore above him rise,
Nor dreams that rapine meets him on the strand. ”

“ The captains and the conquering crews
Humble their pride in prayer.
They pray; and after victory, prayer
Is meet for men who mourn their slain;
The living shall unmoor and sail,
But Death's dark anchor secret deeps detain. ”

“ If we include all who were swept off by the flood, and all who have perished by shipwreck, and all who have been killed in naval battles and buried in the sea, and all who have been swept away by inundations of the ocean, and all who have peacefully died at sea, as sailors, or in the pursuits of commerce or benevolence, the number in the aggregate will be immense—a number so vast that it was proper to notice them particularly in the account of the general resurrection and the last judgment. ”

“ Often was seen the fearful sight of a ship lifted out of the sea into the air, swaying and balancing about, until the men were all thrown out or overwhelmed with stones from slings, when the empty vessel would either be dashed against the fortifications, or dropped into the sea by the claws being let go. ”

“ Trivial enough, I admit! But oh, you readers who imagine the sailor's life in war-time as one continuous round of blood-curdling excitement, try to realize something of its almost unmitigated dullness—a dullness so overwhelming that even such an incident as the above is welcomed as a slight relief.
In the evening the violence of the storm abated, and when I woke the next morning there was scarcely any motion on the ship at all. ”

“ When God's great voice assembles The fleet on Judgment Day, The ghosts of ruined ships will rise In sea and strait and bay. Though they have lain for ages Beneath the changeless flood, They shall be white as silver, But one — shall be like blood. ”

“ A ship is under sail, the wind blows fresh, and she is bearing down upon a rock: let her alone, and her destruction is certain. Or a squall suddenly arises: let her alone, shorten no sail, do not put the vessel before the wind, and no effort is needed to insure her ruin. ”

“ Others calmly breathed their last with their dying eyes fixed upon the cross of Christ, while the anchor of their faith sunk noiselessly into the deep sea of death, and their weary barques were safely moored in that tranquil harbour where neither waves beat nor tempest roared, and where, at last, the "storm-beat vessel safely rode." ”

“ Once out of sight of land, on the boundless ocean where keel of ship had never ploughed before, naught around him but a gloomy waste of waters, naught above him save the sun and stars, no friend to consult, no familiar voice to whisper hope or combat despair, with a crew both ignorant and superstitious, he held on his prearranged course, self-reliant, watchful, and dauntless. ”

“ To add to the intensity of our distress, a pitchy darkness enveloped us when the foremast fell overboard, and the sea breaking, in one continued mighty volume, over the vessel, none could go forward to cut it away ”

“ When, too, fierce force of fury-winds at sea Sweepeth a navy's admiral down the main With his stout legions and his elephants, Doth he not seek the peace of gods with vows, And beg in prayer, a-tremble, lulled winds And friendly gales?—in vain, since, often up-caught In fury-cyclones, is he borne along, For all his mouthings, to the shoals of doom. ”

“ At the commencement of a war, after the completion of a new town, or in any season of general calamity, certain portions of the human body, removed during life, are deposited in special places in vessels designed for the purpose. ”

“ Ah, that it might linger
Until the grave!
But we awaken
To deeper torment.
Our vessel founders;
The light is put out.
From the fair land
We are driven far far away
To a desolate shore
Where night surrounds us. ”

“ Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. ”

“ Every breeze that sweeps over the ocean’s breast is fraught with hidden meaning, and every wave that breaks along our vessels side, will speak to us words of strength and import. Let us watch them as they heave and roll around us—listen to them as they whisper to each other in the soft low tones of their Curling Crests—see what a depth of quiet strength lies buried in the heaving swells as they rise and fall and roll along. ”

“ And with the ebb of the tide the ships sailed out of the harbor,
Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village in ruins. 665
PART THE SECOND. SECTION I. Many a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pre.
When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,
Bearing a nation, with all its household Gods, into exile,
Exile without an end, and without an example in story. ”

“ The ship had been some weeks at sea, when one day a storm broke over it, and the wind drove it for days out of its course. The crew did their best to steer clear of rocks, but she struck on a reef and sprung a leak. ”

“ Some, rather than endure the horrible suspense, trusted themselves to the mercy of the waves, and by plunging overboard, ended their lives and sufferings in a watery grave. Many, in their agony, fell on their knees, imploring God for that help which they despaired of receiving from mortal agency. ”

“ Expanding this principle, Magna Carta required that “amercements (the medieval predecessors of fines) should be proportioned to the offense and that they should not deprive a wrongdoer of his livelihood,” Bajakajian, supra, at 335:
“A free man shall be amerced for a small fault only according to the measure thereof, and for a great crime according to its magnitude, saving his position ”

“ Lets down his feet, strikes at the breaking water, Draws up his golden feet, beats wings, and rises Over the mast.... Light from a crimson cloud Crimsons the sluggishly creeping foams of waves; The seaman, poised in the bow, rises and falls As the deep forefoot finds a way through waves ”

“ How different is the steady ploughing of the waves by the ship whose head is under the rule of the helmsman. There is a definiteness in her path, which shows that she has one point to make, one port in view. Those who live without rule are “like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” The blasts of passion, the current of outside circumstances, carry them whithersoever they list. ”

“ It does not signify whether the enemy clambers in by the window, or whether all at once he shakes the foundation, if at last he destroys the house. In this life we sail, as it were, in all unknown sea. ”

“ He then took, as did all his crew, the vow that, on the first shore which they might reach, they would go in their shirts, in a procession, to make a prayer in some church in invocation of Our Lady.”
“Besides the general vows, or those taken by all in common, each man made his own special vow, because nobody expected to escape. The storm which they experienced was so terrible, that all regarded themselves as lost; what increased the danger was the circumstance that the vessel lacked ballast, because the consumption of food, water and wine had greatly diminished her load. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV THE STORM-SWEPT FLEET OF ADMIRAL GRAVES TO observe what might be called shipwreck on a grand scale, it is necessary to hark back to the days of fleets and convoys under sail, when a hundred or two hundred merchant vessels and men-of-war made a long voyage together. ”

“ Change our course now that the storm drives at our front and the breakers rise behind us? Would you at mid-stream change this good old ship, that has weathered the storm of ages, for one that is new and untried? ”

“ But terrible as was the raging of wind and water, far more awful was the vain struggle for life of the human beings who succumbed to it. In a short time almost all the ships except the men-of-war, which were better provided with anchors, began to drift from their moorings. ”

“ At the surface snorting, in the depths in deadly silence, with jaws interlocked, rolling over and over, spinning in the perpendicular, they wrestled in that desperate struggle which must end in lordship for the one, death or exile for the other. ”

“ Some swam till their strength was exhausted, some gave themselves up to their fate like the young soldier, who spread out his arms, closed his eyes, and plunged from the poop to the sea; some clung to spars, boxes, tables, hencoops, anything that came in their way. ”

“ The human soul, like any other noble vessel, was not built to be anchored, but to sail. An anchorage may, indeed, be at times a temporary need, in order to make some special repairs, or to take fresh cargo in ”

“ A wave strikes her as she reaches it, and dashes her once more to the ground. For a second time she is swept like a straw along the deck, and for the second time the ebb arrests her progress, and leaves her in the same position as before. ”

“ True, the famished, worn - out mariner might die in sight of land and so might we in view of our haven of rest yet the bare hope of reaching it alive, gave ener gy to our sinking spirits, and strength to our failing limbs. ”

“ We hastened our march, and for the first time since our shipwreck, a smiling picture presented itself to our view.—The trees always green, with which that noble river is shaded, the humming birds, the red birds, the paroquets, the promerops, &c. who flitted among their long yielding branches, caused in us emotions difficult to express. ”

“ The ships of the tyrant sailing up to encompass the city of the children of the Lord. It is the day of death and desolation, the day of Armageddon, and ere the sun sets red upon it many a thousand must pass through the gates of doom, we, mayhap, among them. ”

“ When a vessel’s timbers are shivered by the fury of the storm she may not go to pieces altogether. But she is no longer able to hold her own against the elements, which she could once use as forces to convey her from land to land. ”