’So next morning all the Children of Israel and their parents and the other people gathered themselves together.  Well, here was that great crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job.  When time was called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other team to take the first innings.  So they went at it, the whole four hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopefully, and doing their level best.  They prayed an hour—­two hours—­three hours—­and so on, plumb till noon.  It wa’n’t any use; they hadn’t took a trick.  Of course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they might.  Now, what would a magnanimous man do?  Keep still, wouldn’t he?  Of course.  What did Isaac do?  He graveled the prophets of Baal every way he could think of.  Says he, “You don’t speak up loud enough; your god’s asleep, like enough, or may be he’s taking a walk; you want to holler, you know,” or words to that effect; I don’t recollect the exact language.  Mind I don’t apologise for Isaac; he had his faults.

’Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the afternoon, and never raised a spark.  At last, about sundown, they were all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.

’What does Isaac do, now?  He steps up and says to some friends of his, there, “Pour four barrels of water on the altar!” Everybody was astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got whitewashed.  They poured it on.  Says he, “Heave on four more barrels.”  Then he says, “Heave on four more.”  Twelve barrels, you see, altogether.  The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads—­“measures,” it says:  I reckon it means about a hogshead.  Some of the people were going to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy.  They didn’t know Isaac.  Isaac knelt down and began to pray:  he strung along, and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about those that’s in authority in the government, and all the usual programme, you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up the whole thing blazes like a house afire!  Twelve barrels of water?  Petroleum, sir, Petroleum! that’s what it was!’

‘Petroleum, captain?’

’Yes, sir; the country was full of it.  Isaac knew all about that.  You read the Bible.  Don’t you worry about the tough places.  They ain’t tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them.  There ain’t a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go prayerfully to work and cipher out how ‘twas done.’