“How strange,” he thought, “to find
myself now in the midst of what I then but saw!
This reeling ocean was but a picture to me then—
a picture framed in the window; it is now alive and
I toss like a toy on its wild commotion. Then
I but saw from afar the flashing of the white out
of the blue water, and the blue sky overhead, which
no winds can rend into pallid pains; now I have to
keep eye and hand together in one consent to shun
death; I meet wind and wave on their own terms, and
humour the one into an evasion of the other.
The wind that then revealed itself only in white blots
and streaks now lashes my hair into my eyes, and only
the lift of my bows is betwixt me and the throat that
swallows the whales and the krakens.
“Will it be so with death? It looks strange
and far off now, but it draws nigh noiselessly, and
one day I meet it face to face in the grapple:
shall I rejoice in that wrestle as I rejoice in this?
Will not my heart grow sick within me? Shall I
not be faint and fearful? And yet I could almost
wish it were at hand!
“I wonder how death and this wan water here
look to God! To him is it like a dream—a
picture? Water cannot wet him; death cannot touch
him. Yet Jesus could have let the water wet him;
and he granted power to death when he bowed his head
and gave up the ghost. God knows how things look
to us both far off and near; he also can see them
so when he pleases. What they look to him is what
they are: we cannot see them so, but we see them
as he meant us to see them, therefore truly, according
to the measure of the created. Made in the image
of God, we see things in the image of his sight.”
Thoughts like these, only in yet cruder forms, swept
through the mind of Malcolm as he tossed on that autumn
sea. But what we call crude forms are often in
reality germinal forms; and one or other of these
flowered at once into the practical conclusion that
God must know all his trouble, and would work for
him a worthy peace. Ere he turned again towards
the harbour, he had reascended the cloud haunted Pisgah
whence the words of Lady Florimel had hurled him.
CHAPTER L: LIZZY FINDLAY
Leaving his boat again on the dry sand that sloped
steep into the harbour, Malcolm took his way homeward
along the shore. Presently he spied, at some
little distance in front of him, a woman sitting on
the .sand, with her head bowed upon her knees.
She had no shawl, though the wind was cold and strong,
blowing her hair about wildly. Her attitude and
whole appearance were the very picture of misery.
He drew near and recognized her.
“What on earth’s gane wrang wi’
ye, Lizzy?” he asked.
“Ow naething,” she murmured, without lifting
her head. The brief reply was broken by a sob.
“That canna be,” persisted Malcolm, trouble
of whose own had never yet rendered him indifferent
to that of another. “Is ’t onything
‘at a body cun stan’ by ye in?”
