The life and work of St. Paul

570 THE LIFE AND WORK 0? ST. PAUL.
the lives of all on board. He bade them, tlioref ore, to cheer up, and to share
Lis own conviction that the vision should come true.
Who shall eay how much those calm undoubting words were designed by
God to help in bringing about their own fulfilment ? Much had yet to be
done ; many a strong measure to avert destruction had yet to be taken ; and
God helps those only who will take the appointed means to help themselves.
The proud words " Caeearem vehis " 1 may have inspired the frightened sailor
to strenuous effort in the open boat on the coast of Illjria, and certainly it was
Paul's undaunted encouragements which re-inspired these starving, fainting,
despairing mariners to the exertions which ultimately secured their safety.
For after they had drifted fourteen days, tossed up and down on the heaving
waves of Adria, 2 a weltering plaything for the gale, suddenly on tho fourteenth
night the sailors, amid the sounds of the long-continued storm, fancied that
they heard the roar of breakers through the midnight darkness. Suspecting
that they were neariug some land, and perhaps even detecting that white
phosphorescent gleam of a surf-beat shore which is visible so far through even
the blackest night, they dropped the lead and found that they were in twenty
fathom water. Sounding again, they found that they were in fifteen fathoms.8
Their suspicions and fears were now turned to certainty, and hero was the
fresh danger of having their desolate hulk driven irresistibly upon some iron
coast. In the face of this frosh peril the only thing to be done was to drop
anchor. Had they anchored the vessel in the usual manner, from the prow/
the ship might have swung round against a reef; nor could they suppose, as
they heard the extraordinary loudness of the surf beating upon the shore, that
they were at that moment a quarter of a mile from land. So they dropped
four anchors* through the hawse-holes in which the two great paddle-rudders
drifted before
ordinarily moved ; since these having long boon useless as they
the galehad been half lifted out of the water, and lashed to the stern.*
Having done this, they could only yearn with intense desire for the dawn of
day. All through the remaining hours of that long wintry night, they etood
face to face with the agony of death. In its present condition, the leak con-
stantly gaining on them, the waves constantly deluging them with spray, the
vessel might at any moment sink, even if the anchors held. But they did not
know, what we know, that those anchors had dropped into clay of extraordinary
'
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1 Plut. Cats. 38; De Fort. JRom. 6; Florae, IT. 2; Dion Casa. sll. 48. "Et fortunam
Caesaris " is a later addition.
"
The Mediterranean between Greece, Italy, and Africa. Strabo, ii. 123. 'IOWOK
jre/uyos, 6 "
vvv'A5pi(Hosych.). 4uuj>tpofievo', tossed hither and thither." So it would
appear to those on board, but probably they drifted in the E.N. Easter. 477 mile* in
thirteen days at the natural rate of one mile and a half an hour. (See Smith, p. 101.)
3 Mr. Smith says that Captain Stewart's soundings "would alone have furnished a
conclusive test of tha truth of this narrative" (p. ix.) ; and that we are enabled by these
and similar investigations "to identify the locality of a shipwreck which took place
eighteen centuries ago" (p. xiii.}.
4 "Anchor* de prora jacitur" (Virg. Mn. lil. 277). Lord Nelson, reading this
chapter just before the battle of Copenhagen, ordered our vessels to be anchored by
the stern.
* Cf. Gaei. Bell, Civ. i 25,
* Ax appears from zxr!L 40.