The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

Abel Keeling, his mind now noting minute things and now clouded with
torpor, did not at first hear a voice that was quakingly lifted up over by the
forecastle—a voice that drew nearer, to an accompaniment of swirling water.
“O Thou, that Jonas in the fish
Three days didst keep from pain,
Which was a figure of Thy death
And rising up again—”
It was Bligh, singing one of his hymns:
“O Thou, that Noah keptst from flood
And Abram, day by day,
As he along through Egypt passed
Didst guide him in the way—”
The voice ceased, leaving the pious period uncompleted. Bligh was alive, at
any rate.… Abel Keeling resumed his fitful musing.
Yes, that was the Law of Bligh’s life, to call things the Hand of God; but Abel
Keeling’s Law was different; no better, no worse, only different. The Hand of
God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by some method; and Abel
Keeling’s eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if he sought the method there.
…
Then conscious thought left him for a space, and when he resumed it was
without obvious connection.
Oars, of course, were the thing. With oars, men could laugh at calms. Oars,
that only pinnaces and galliasses now used, had had their advantages. But oars
(which was to say a method, for you could say if you liked that the Hand of God
grasped the oar-loom, as the Breath of God filled the sail)—oars were
antiquated, belonged to the past, and meant a throwing-over of all that was good
and new and a return to fine lines, a battle-formation abreast to give effect to the
shock of the ram, and a day or two at sea and then to port again for provisions.
Oars…no. Abel Keeling was one of the new men, the men who swore by the
line-ahead, the broadside fire of sakers and demi-cannon, and weeks and months
without a landfall. Perhaps one day the wits of such men as he would devise a
craft, not oar-driven (because oars could not penetrate into the remote seas of the
world)—not sail-driven (because men who trusted to sails found themselves in
an airless, three-mile strait, suspended motionless between cloud and water, ever
gliding to a wall of rock)—but a ship…a ship…