they were merchants on the mighty waters.
They saw the works of the Lord,
His wonderful deeds in the deep.
For He spoke and stirred up a tempest
that lifted high the waves.
They mounted up to the heavens and went
down to the depths;
in their peril their courage melted away.
They reeled and staggered like drunkards;
they were at their wits’ end.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their
trouble,
and He brought them out of their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper;
the waves of the sea were hushed.
They were glad when it grew calm,
and He guided them to their desired haven.’
But the storm is not stilled with a whisper and the waves are not hushed and it does not grow calm, and the only guidance to be found is the wind Euraquilo.
The crew swing the ship so that its prow points into the gale. Then they rig a small foresail, only big enough to hold the bow position, in hope not to be sunk by wave-crashes from the side. And they throw out sea-anchors to steady and slow. But they can do nothing more than this and the ship courses with the storm, dragged ever further from safety.
The breakers are blasted skyward and the rain comes drenching as a sea and the heavens are half as often at the side as above, so that no one even knows which way is up or where water ends and air begins. One wave hasn’t passed before the next hits and they join and tear apart again. The deck is treacherous and terrifying, lit only when lightning flashes, but to go below is to sit in rocking, slopping liquid in darkness and misery and to know that water lies on every side and even overhead.
On the next day the tempest has not diminished and the ship is tossed so fearfully that it’s decided they must jettison the cargo, to lessen the force of the waves on the broadside. Valuable sacks of Nile grain are heaved from the hold in human chain over slippery, pitching boards and fed to Poseidon’s white horses. But if that salt god is pleased by the gift, he doesn’t show it and the storm continues to rage.
The third day, to further lighten, for fear the planks will be torn apart, they hurl into the billows all the ship’s goods and tackle, everything any less than vital. And the wounds caused by falls and splintered wood are first washed clean and then washed raw. And the passengers follow the crew in lashing themselves to those parts of the ship they deem least likely to be swept away.
The gale still doesn’t abate. And after many more nights’ drifting before it, fear itself is just a distant memory, replaced in most with the certainty of despair. For more than a week the sailors see neither sun nor stars nor any land, so that they cannot do better than guess where they are. Some fear they will be crushed on reefs or rocks and others that they will disintegrate in the open water. And old salts, who had thought they had known and conquered every hazard of the sea, cry tears masked by the rain and the sprays and sob supplications hidden in the howls of the gale.
They can’t make cooking fires on deck to bake the remnants of grain, and all the hardened biscuits and salted fish are long gone, so they eat raw, mortared corn, damp with blustered sea water. Most hunger and all are cold. The soldiers and seamen have woollen cloaks waterproofed with oil and Paul and his pseudo-slaves have thick travelling clothes, but all of these are drenched and heavy. The damnati shiver in their shackles, clustered tight together like a colony of seabirds. Not a nail or pot or inch of skin on board has known dryness in a week. Chains and ropes have snapped; the taut foresail barely holds. And the ship sometimes leans so hard that a man at the side could stretch a hand into the deep, but all are strapped at the centre away from waters that yawn like jaws.
More days they suffer in hopelessness, still blasted towards they know not what fate by the storm; perhaps even until they drop off the edge of the world. Each time they think they feel the tempest lighten, it proves to be a dream.
Paul reminds them of how they should have followed his advice: never to have left the anchorage at Fair Havens. But they resist the urge to send him over, like a Jonah, for long enough to hear him also say that an angel came to him in the night and promised they would all be saved. Some of the mariners pluck small comfort from this because — though no man saw this angel — it is clear from Paul’s countenance that he earnestly believes what he says, and there is no other comfort to be found.
They will not even know a grave or pyre when the ship goes down, only the ocean and the stripping fishes. Some have travelled half the world to be here and some who are slaves had no choice in that. And men who have never prayed in their lives pray now. To Poseidon, Thalassa and Oceanus; to Triton and Palaemon; to Castor and Pollux; to the sea nymph Thetis and the white goddess Leukothea; and some even wager a prayer to that resurrected God of Paul’s to see if He might bring them back from this oblivion.
It is near midnight on the fourteenth day adrift in the tempest when the first sailor senses that land is near. And others, too, believe it to be so, either smelling soil, as some old tars can, or picking out the resound of breakers upon a shore even amid the still-blowing storm.
Though water washes across the deck, so deep it is sometimes hard to be sure they are not sunk, the mariners take a depth-sounding over the side and find it twenty fathoms and then a little later fifteen fathoms. But because it is double dark from cloud and night they can’t risk drifting in to smash upon cliffs or rocks so they throw out four anchors from the stern, which by miracle catch in clay, to hold the ship fast. The vessel slews about, like a bull at the end of a charge, and with the groans of planks in the last of integrity, the prow faces a shore the voyagers cannot see.
Some deckhands lower the ship’s boat, saying that they are going to lay more anchors in advance of the bow — each two-armed of jujube wood and iron — so that the ship can be eased slowly into land when daylight comes. Probably their intentions are honest — it would seemingly be suicide to make for an unknown and stormy shore in a small craft in the dark — but Paul is convinced the men are trying to escape to save only themselves and he persuades the centurion of it. So Julius slices the lifeboat’s rope and it is set adrift, an empty vessel on a shadow sea.
Daylight reveals a coast that no one on board recognizes but which has at one point a sandy bay. Because the ship is anchored from the rear, it is proposed that they raise the foresail, cut the lines and attempt to beach the ship.
So they slot the steering oars, and at the captain’s signal, as the cloth fills, soldiers hack all four anchor ropes at once and the ship, under full sail for the first time in two weeks, ploughs at speed towards the land. Their course runs true at the bay and even the damnati cheer and laugh. But then, still some distance from shore, the ship strikes a sandbar and every man is thrown from his feet.
The fore of the ship is held fast by the bank, but waves continue to pound into the stern, and the much battered boards begin to fragment. Many weep then, to have come so close to salvation, only to face the water, after all. Those of the sailors who can swim, seeing that the ship is breaking up and knowing the first will have it best with the sharks, leap into the sea and make for the beach. The prisoners plead to be freed from their chains, so that they, too, might try for land. Some of the soldiers would sooner put them to death, to prevent escape. But Paul repeats to Julius the angel’s promise that all would be saved and the centurion orders that the damnati be released. And the soldiers leave their weapons, to better their chances with the billows.