“Non vultus instantis tyranni
Meute quatit solida, nee Auster
Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae.”—HOR. Od.
“The flattering wind that late with promised aid
From Candia’s bay the unwilling ship betrayed,
No longer fawns, beneath the fair disguise,
But like a ruffian on his quarry flies.”—FALCONER, Shipwreck,canto ii.
AT the earliest opportunity which offered, St. Paul, and such other prisoners1 as were waiting the result of an appeal, were despatched to Italy under the charge of Julius, a centurion of an Augustan cohort. This Augustan cohort may either be some local troop of soldiers of that name stationed at Cæsarea, since the name “Augustan” was as common as “Royal” among us; or they may have belonged to the body of Augustani—veterans originally enrolled by Augustus as a body–guard;2 or they may have been the Prætorian guards themselves, who occasionally, though not frequently, were sent out of Italy on imperial missions.3 It is not, however, said that Julius was accompanied by his cohort, and it is not at all impossible that he may have been sent with a few of those chosen soldiers of the most distinguished Roman regiments to give èclatto the arrival of Festus in one of the wealthiest but most disaffected of imperial provinces.4 If this were the case, Julius may very well have been that Julius Priscus who afterwards rose to the splendid position of one of the two Præfects of the Prætorians, and committed suicide on the disgraceful overthrow of his patron.5 We see enough of him during this voyage to lead us to believe that he was a sensible, honourable, and kindly man.
Roman soldiers were responsible with their own lives for the security of their prisoners, and this had originated the custom—so painful to the prisoners, and all the more painful because so necessarily irritating to the legionaries— of keeping the prisoners safe by chaining them with a long light chain by the right wrist to the left wrist of soldiers, who relieved each other in turn. It maybe imagined how frightfully trying it must have been to have no moment and no movement free, and to be fettered in such horrible proximity to a man who would certainly have been an uneducated specimen of the lowest classes, and who, surrounded from boyhood upwards by rough and demoralising companionships, might be a coarse and loose provincial, or a morose and brutal peasant from the dregs of the Italian population. It is tolerably certain that ashore prisoners were not allowed to go anywhere without this galling protection, but we may hope that they were not always subject to it in the narrow fetid cribs and hatchways of the huge, rolling, unwieldly merchantmen in which their compulsory voyages had to be performed.
Since Festus had arrived in Palestine towards the end of June, it must now have been late in August, and the time was rapidly drawing on in which ancient navigation was closed for the year. Every day made the weather more uncertain and the voyage more perilous, and since time was pressing, Julius, to whom the commission was entrusted, embarked his prisoners on board a coasting merchantman of the Mysian town of Adramyttium. As the vessel would touch at the chief ports on the west of Asia, there was every possibility of their finding a ship at Ephesus, or at some nearer port, in which they could perform the rest of their voyage; but if not, Julius might, as a last resource, march his soldiers and their prisoners from Adramyttium to Troas, and thence sail to Neapolis, whence he could proceed along the great Egnatian Road, already so familiar to St. Paul, through Philippi and Thessalonica to Dyrrhachium. Dyrrhachium and Brundusium were to the Romans what Calais and Dover are to the English; and after crossing the Ægean, Julius would march along the Appian Road—in a reverse order through the scenes described with such lively humour by Horace in his Iter ad Brundusium—till his journey ended at Rome. This was the route traversed by St. Ignatius and his “ten leopards” who conducted him to his martyrdom, and in his disagreeable connexion with whom he says that he fought with wild beasts all the way. It is, however, most unlikely that a land journey entered into the immediate plans of Julius. As he had several prisoners under his charge, each of whom would require ten soldiers to relieve guard, such a journey would be inexpressibly tedious and extremely expensive; and Julius might rely with tolerable certainty on finding some vessel which was bound from one of the great emporiums of Asia for the capital of the world.
St. Paul was spared one at least of the circumstances which would have weighed most heavily on his spirits—he was not alone. Luke and Aristarchus accompanied him, and, whether such had been their original intention or not, both were at any rate driven by stress of circumstances to remain with him during great part of his Roman imprisonment. They, no doubt, were passengers, not prisoners, and they must either have paid their own expenses,6 or have been provided with money for that purpose by Christians, who knew how necessary was some attendance for one so stricken with personal infirmities as their illustrious Apostle.
The voyage began happily and prosperously. The leading westerly wind was so far favourable that the day after they started they had accomplished the sixty–seven miles which lay between them and the harbour of Sidon. There they touched, and Julius, who can hardly have been absent from the brilliant throng who had listened to Paul’s address before Agrippa, was so indulgently disposed towards him that he gave him leave—perhaps merely on parole—to land and see his friends who formed the little Christian community of that place. This kindness was invaluable to St. Paul. The two years’ imprisonment must have told unfavourably upon his health, and he must have been but scantily provided with the requisites for a long voyage. The expression used by St. Luke that Julius allowed him to go to his friend and “be cared for,”7 seems to imply that even during that one day’s voyage he had suffered either from sea–sickness or from general infirmity. The day at Sidon was the one happy interlude which was to prepare him for many anxious, miserable, and storm–tossed weeks.
For from that day forward the entire voyage became a succession of delays and accidents, which, after two months of storm and danger, culminated in hopeless shipwreck. No sooner had they left the harbour of Sidon than they encountered the baffling Etesian winds, which blow steadily from the north–west. This was an unlooked–for hindrance, because the Etesians usually cease to blow towards the end of August, and are succeeded by south winds, on which the captain of the merchantman had doubtless relied to waft him back to his port of Adramyttium. His natural course would have been to sail straight across from Sidon to Patara, leaving Cyprus on the starboard; but the very winds which sped St. Paul so blythely along this course to his Cæsarean imprisonment more than two years before, were now against his return, and the vessel had to sail towards Cape Pedalium, the south–eastern promontory of Cyprus, hugging the shore under the lee of the island as far as Cape Dinaretum.8 On rounding this cape they could beat to windward by the aid of land–breezes and westward currents right across the sea which washes the coasts of Cilicia and Pamphylia, until they dropped anchor in the mouth of the river Andriacus, opposite to a hill crowned with the magnificent buildings of Myra, the former capital of Lycia.9
Here they were fortunate—or, as it turned out, unfortunate—enough to find a large Alexandrian wheat–ship,10 which had undergone the common fate of being driven out of the direct course by the same winds which had baffled the Adramyttian vessel, and which now intended to follow the usual alternative of creeping across the Ægean from island to island, northward of Crete, and so to the south of Cythera, and across to Syracuse.11 This vessel, built for the purposes of the trade which supplied to all Italy the staff of life, could easily provide room for the centurion with his soldiers and prisoners, and such passengers as chose to accompany them. They were, therefore, shifted into this vessel, and sailed for Cnidus, the last point at which they could hope for any help from the protection of the shore with its breezes and currents. The distance between the two spots is only one hundred and thirty miles, and under favourable circumstances they might have got to their destination in twenty–four hours. But the baffling Etesians still continued with unseasonable steadiness, and to reach even to Cnidus occupied many weary and uncomfortable days. And when they got off the beautiful and commodious harbour they were destined to a fresh and bitter disappointment, for they could not enter it. Had they been able to do so the season was by this time so far advanced, and the wind was so steadily adverse, that we can hardly doubt that, unless they continued their journey by land, they would either have waited there for a more favourable breeze, or decided to winter in a port where there was every pleasant requisite at hand for the convenience of so large a vessel, and its numerous crew. Since, however, the wind would neither suffer them to put in at Cnidus,12 nor to continue their direct voyage, which would have passed north of Crete, the only alternative left them was to make for Cape Salmone, at the eastern end of the island, and there sail under its lee. To get to Salmone was comparatively easy; but when they had rounded it they had the utmost difficulty in creeping along the weather shore until they came to a place called Fair Havens, a little to the east of Cape Matala, and not far from an obscure town of the name of Lasæa. While the wind remained in its present quarter it was useless to continue their voyage, for beyond Cape Matala the shore trends sharply to the north, and they would have been exposed to the whole force of the Etesians, with a lee shore on which they would inevitably have been dashed to pieces. At Fair Havens, therefore, they were obliged to put in, and wait for a change of wind. Time passed, and found them still windbound. It was now getting towards the close of September. At Fair Havens St. Paul and any Jewish Christians on board would probably keep the Kippor, or great day of Atonement,13 the one fast in the Jewish calendar, which this year fell on September 24. The autumnal equinox passed. The Feast of Tabernacles passed, and perhaps some of the sailors regarded with superstitious terror the partial eclipse which occurred on that evening. The Jewish season for navigation was now over,14 but the Gentiles did not regard the sea as closed until November 11.15 Discussions took place as to whether they should winter where they were or choose the first favourable chance of pushing on round Cape Matala to Port Phœnix, which lay only thirty–four miles beyond it. St. Paul, whose remarkable ascendency had already displayed itself, was allowed to give his opinion, and he gave it emphatically in favour of staying where they were. “Sirs,” he said, “I perceive that this voyage will certainly result in violent weather, and much loss not only of the cargo and of the ship, but even of our lives.” His opinion was entitled to great weight, because his many voyages had made him thoroughly familiar with the winds and dangers of a sea in which he had thrice been shipwrecked, and had once floated for a night and a day. The captain, however, and the owner of the vessel gave their opinion the other way; and it must be admitted that they had much to urge. Fair Havens afforded a shelter from the norwester which had so long been prevalent, but it was entirely unprotected against east winds, and indeed lay open to most points of the compass. It would, therefore, be a dangerous haven in which to pass the winter, and it was further unsuitable because the place itself was a poor one, not quite close even to the town of Lasæa, and offering no means of employment or amusement for the soldiers and sailors. It would have been a serious matter to spend three or four months in a place so dreary and desolate, and it seemed worth while, if possible, to get to Port Phœnix. That town, the modern Lutro, which they could reach in a few hours’ sail, enjoyed the advantage of the only harbour on the south of Crete which is safe in all weathers, and which was therefore a familiar resort of Alexandrian corn–ships. Its harbour was closed and protected by a little island, and was described by those who advocated its claims as “looking towards Libs and towards Caurus,” or, as we should say, towards the southwest and the north–west. It has greatly puzzled commentators to account for this expression, seeing that the entrance to the harbour of Lutro (which is undoubtedly the ancient Phœnix) looks towards the east, and its two openings at the extremities of its sheltering island look precisely in the opposite directions, namely, north–east and south–east. The explanation of this singular anomaly is not to be sought in grammatical illustrations, but in the subjectivity of the sailors, who simply regard the bearings of the harbour from the directions in which they sail into it, and might say, for instance, that a harbour “looked towards” the north, if they could only sail into it by turning their prow northward; just as farther on in the chapter they speak of “some land approaching them,” when in reality they are approaching some land.16 But besides the security of Port Phœnix, it was evidently a far more desirable place for nearly three hundred people to winter in than the comparatively obscure and lonely Fair Havens, and on both these grounds it seemed to be worth a slight risk to reach it. These arguments won the adhesion of the majority, and the centurion, with whom the decision rested, decided that this should be done. St. Paul claimed no inspiration for the solemn advice he gave,17 and of course there was a fair chance of safely traversing so short a distance. Yet results proved that his advice was right. Fair Havens, though not a first–rate harbour, is yet partially protected by reefs and islets, and though it might not be wholly safe to winter there, yet the risk was much smaller than that which must be incurred by doubling Cape Matala, and so getting possibly seized in the grasp of one of the prevalent and sudden northerly gales, which would drive the ship into almost certain destruction. But there is a gambling element in human nature, and the centurion, at any rate, could hardly avoid following the opinion of the experts, whose interests were so deeply concerned, in preference to that of a prisoner, whose knowledge was not professional and who had so much less at stake.
It was not long before the wished–for opportunity occurred.18 A soft south wind sprang up, and gladly weighing anchor, they hoisted the great mainsail, took their boat in tow, sailed close along the shore to the point of Cape Matala, and then gaily prepared for a delightful run of a few hours to the beautiful and hospitable harbour for which they were abandoning the dull, dreary Lasæa. Now at last a little gleam of prosperity seemed to have shone on their tedious and unfortunate voyage. Perhaps they had a good–natured laugh against Paul the prisoner for advice which would have made them throw away a golden chance. But, alas! the gentle breathing of the south wind in the sails and cordage was but a siren song which had lured them to their destruction. They had not long passed the cape, when a tempestuous typhoon19—such as often in those latitudes succeeds a brief spell of the south wind—burst down from the Cretan Ida, and smote with terrible fury on the hapless vessel. The ancient name of this “Levanter,” as it is now called, was probably Euroaquilo, a name which exactly describes its direction, since we see from St. Luke’s subsequent remarks that it must have been an east–north–easter, which, indeed, continued to blow during the remainder of their voyage.20 From the first moment that this fatal blast rushed down from the hills and seized the wheat–ship in its grasp,21 the condition of the vessel was practically hopeless. It was utterly impossible for her—it would have been impossible for the finest made vessel—to “look the wind in the face.”22 The suddenness and fury of the blow left the sailors not one moment to furl the mainsail, or to do anything but leave the ship to be driven madly forward before the gale,23 until after a fearful run of twenty–three miles they neared the little island of Clauda,24 and ran in under its lee. Happily the direction of the wind, and the fact—in which we see the clear hand of Providence—that the storm had burst on them soon after they had rounded Cape Matala, and not a little later on in their course, had saved them from being dashed upon the rocks and reefs, which lie more to the north–west between both Candia and Clauda; but their condition was, in other respects, already dangerous, if not quite desperate. The ships of the ancients had one mainmast and one mainsail; any other masts or rigging were comparatively small and insignificant. Hence the strain upon the vessel from the leverage of the mast was terrific, and it was impossible that the Alexandrian ship, however stoutly built, should have scudded with her huge sail set in the grasp of a typhoon, without her timbers starting. It is evident that she had already sprung a serious leak. There was no available harbour in the little island, and therefore the captain, who seems to have shown the best seamanship which was possible in his age, took advantage of the brief and partial lull which was afforded them by the shelter of the island to do the two things which were most immediately necessary—namely, first to secure the means of escape, for some at any rate of the crew, in case the vessel foundered, and next to put off that catastrophe as long as possible. He therefore gave orders at once to hoist the boat on board, and so secure it from being staved in. But this was a task by no means easy. The boat, which they had so securely towed astern in what they meant to be a sort of gala trip to Port Phœnix, had now been hurled after them through twenty miles of their swirling wake, and must therefore have been sorely battered, and perhaps half water–logged; and though they were now in slightly smoother water, yet such was the violence of the gale that it was difficult to perform the simplest duty. They managed, however—and Luke was one of those who lent a hand in doing it25—to heave the boat on board as a last resource in the moment of peril; and then the sailors proceeded to adopt the rough and clumsy method in use among the ancients to keep a vessel together. This consisted in undergirding, or, to use the modern and technical term for a practice which is now but rarely resorted to, in “frapping” it, by passing stout hawsers several times under the prow, and tying them as tightly as possible round the middle of the vessel.26 They had thus met the two most pressing dangers, hut a third remained. There was no place into which they could run for shelter, nor could they long avail themselves of the partial protection which they derived from the weather–shore of the little island, and they knew too well that the wind was driving them straight towards the Goodwin Sands of the Mediterranean—the dreaded bay of the Greater Syrtis.27 There was only one way to save themselves, which was not, as the English Version most erroneously expresses it, to “strike sail and so be driven”— since this would be certain destruction—but to lie to, by rounding the prow of the vessel on the starboard tack as near to the wind as possible, to send down the topsail and cordage, lower the ponderous yard to such a height as would leave enough of the huge mainsail to steady the vessel,28 set the artemo, or storm–sail, and so—having made all as snug as their circumstances permitted—let her drift on, broadside to leeward, at the mercy of wind and wave. This they did, and so ended the miserable day, which had begun with such soft breezes and presumptuous hopes.29
All night long the storm blew, and, in spite of the undergirding, the vessel still leaked. Next day, therefore, they kept throwing over from time to time everything that could possibly be spared to lighten the ship;30 but even this was insufficient. The next night brought no relief; the vessel still leaked and leaked, and all labour at the pumps was in vain. The fate which most commonly befell ancient vessels—that of foundering at sea—was obviously imminent. On the third day, therefore, it became necessary to take some still more decisive step. This, in a modern vessel, would have been to cut down the masts by the board; in ancient vessels, of which the masts were of a less towering height, it consisted in heaving overboard the huge mainyard, which, as we see, was an act requiring the united assistance of all the active hands.31 It fell over with a great splash, and the ship was indefinitely lightened. But now her violent rolling—all the more sensible from the loose nature of her cargo—was only counteracted by a trivial storm–sail. The typhoon, indeed, had become an ordinary gale, but the ship had now been reduced to the condition of a leaky and dismantled hulk, swept from stem to stern by the dashing spray, and drifting, no one knew whither, under leaden and moonless heavens. A gloomy apathy began to settle more and more upon those helpless three hundred souls. There were no means of cooking; no fire could be lighted; the caboose and utensils must long ago have been washed overboard; the provisions had probably been spoiled and sodden by the waves that broke over the ship; indeed, with death staring them in the face, no one cared to eat. They were famishing wretches in a fast–sinking ship, drifting, with hopes that diminished day by day, to what they regarded as an awful and a certain death.
But in that desperate crisis one man retained his calm and courage. It was Paul the prisoner, probably in physical health the weakest and the greatest sufferer of them all. But it is in such moments that the courage of the noblest souls shines with the purest lustre, and the soul of Paul was inwardly enlightened. As he prayed in all the peacefulness of a blameless conscience, it was revealed to him that God would fulfil the promised destiny which was to lead him to Rome, and that, with the preservation of his own life, God would also grant to him the lives of those unhappy sufferers, for whom, all unworthy as some of them soon proved to be, his human heart yearned with pity. While the rest were abandoning themselves to despair, Paul stood forth on the deck, and after gently reproaching them with having rejected the advice which would have saved them from all that buffeting and loss,32 he bade them cheer up, for though the ship should be lost, and they should be wrecked on some island, not one of them should lose their lives. For they knew that he was a prisoner who had appealed to Cæsar; and that night an angel of the God, whose child and servant he was, had stood by him, and not only assured him that he should stand before Cæsar, but also that God had, as a sign of His grace, granted him the lives of all on board. He bade them, therefore, to cheer up, and to share his own conviction that the vision should come true.
Who shall say 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 “Caesarem vehis”33 may have inspired the frightened sailor to strenuous effort in the open boat on the coast of Illyria, 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,34 a weltering plaything for the gale, suddenly on the 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 nearing 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.35 Their suspicions and fears were now turned to certainty, and here was the fresh danger of having their desolate hulk driven irresistibly upon some iron coast. In the face of this fresh peril the only thing to be done was to drop anchor. Had they anchored the vessel in the usual manner, from the prow,36 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 anchors37 through the hawse–holes in which the two great paddle–rudders ordinarily moved; since these—having long been useless as they drifted before the gale—had been half lifted out of the water, and lashed to the stern.38 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 stood face to face with the agony of death. In its present condition, the leak constantly 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 tenacity, which, indeed, was the sole circumstance between them and hopeless wreck.
Gradually through the murky atmosphere of rain and tempest, the grim day began to dawn upon the miserable crew. Almost as soon as they could see the dim outlines of their own faces, haggard and ghastly with so much privation and so many fears, they observed that they were anchored off a low point, over which the sea was curling with a huge and most furious surf. Ignorant that this was Point Koura, on the north–east side of Malta,39 and not recognising a single landmark on the featureless shore, the only thought of the selfish heathen sailors was to abandon the hulk and crew to their fate, while they saved themselves in the boat which they had with such trouble and danger hoisted on board. Pretending, therefore, that they could steady the pitching of the ship, and therefore make her hold together for a longer time, if they used more anchors, and laid them out at full length of the cables40 instead of merely dropping them from the prow, they began to unlash the boat and lower her into the sea. Had they succeeded in their plot, they would probably have been swamped in the surf upon the point, and all on board would inevitably have perished from inability to handle the sinking vessel. From this danger alike the crew and the sailors were once more saved by the prompt energy and courage of St. Paul. Seeing through the base design, he quietly observed to Julius, who was the person of most authority on board, “If these sailors do not stay in the ship, ye cannot be saved.” He says “ye,” not “we.” Strong in God’s promise, he had no shadow of doubt respecting his own preservation, but the promise of safety to all the crew was conditional on their own performance of duty. The soldiers, crowded together in the vessel with their prisoners, heard the remark of Paul, and—since he alone at that wild moment of peril had kept calm, and was therefore the virtual captain—without the smallest scruple drew their swords and cut through the boat’s ropes, letting her fall away in the trough of the sea. It is not likely that the sailors felt much resentment. Their plan was distinctly base, and it offered at the best a very forlorn and dubious hope of safety. But the daylight had now increased, and the hour was approaching in which everything would depend upon their skill and promptitude, and on the presence of mind of all on board. Once more, therefore, the Apostle encouraged them, and urged them all to take some food. “This is the fourteenth day,” he said, “on which you are continuing foodless, in constant anxiety and vigilance, without taking anything. I entreat you, then, all to join in a meal, which is indeed essential to that preservation, of which I assure you with confidence, for not a hair of the head of any one of you shall perish.” And having given them this encouragement, he himself set the example. Making of the simplest necessity of life a religious and eucharistic act, he took bread, gave thanks to God in the presence of them all, broke it, and began to eat. Catching the contagion of his cheerful trust, the drenched, miserable throng of 276 souls, who had so long been huddled together in their unspeakable wretchedness and discomfort, as their shattered vessel lay rolling and tossing under the dismal clouds, took fresh courage, and shared with him in a hearty meal. Knowing that this was the last meal they could ever take in the dismasted vessel, and also that it would he impossible to save the cargo, they lightened and righted the vessel by flinging overboard the wheat, which in the long drift of 476 miles from Clauda in the storm must have shifted much to one side and made the vessel heel over in a dangerous manner. When the full daylight enabled them to examine the shore, they saw no recognisable landmark—since the present Valetta, the harbour of Malta, at which ships often touched, was seven miles E.S.E. of the point where they were wrecked; but they saw a bay, at one extremity of which the cliffs sank down into a flat beach, and the only thing which they could hope to do was to thrust the ship out of her direct course, and strand her at this spot. To make a tack athwart the wind with a disabled ship was a manœuvre by no means easy, but it was worth attempting. They therefore cut away the anchors, letting the ropes drop into the sea,41 unlashed and let down the paddle–rudders,42 hoisted the artemo, or fore–sail43—which was all that was left them—to the wind, and steered straight for the beach. But their manœuvre, resolutely as it had been undertaken, was a failure. They had unconsciously anchored off Ras el Koura. The opposite point looked like another promontory, but was in reality the island of Salmonetta, separated from the mainland by a deep, narrow, and precipitous channel. Through this channel, about a hundred yards in width, ran a current, and in the stormy race where the waters of this current met the waters of the bay, the vessel44 would not answer to the helm, and all they could do was to run her ashore. Happily for them she drove, not upon a rock, but deep into a bank of mud, such as still exists at that very spot. Here the prow stuck immovably fast, while the stern was free. The crew rushed to the prow, while the waves, which broke with fury over the unsupported stern, began instantly to batter it to pieces. Here, even at this extremity, there rose for Paul and the other prisoners a new, unexpected, and yet more terrible danger. It was the duty of the soldiers to be responsible with their own lives for their prisoners. The Roman law was stern, rigid, and unbending, nor did it admit of any extenuating plea. So long as death seemed imminent, and every hand on board might be useful in averting it, the prisoners must have been left unchained; but in such a crisis as this, what was there to prevent any one of them from taking a dive into the sea, and so escaping? It would have been a horrible thing that blood and butchery should stain the planks of a shipwrecked vessel at the very moment when safety seemed within reach, and that this human sacrifice of lives which God had rescued should be the only thanksgiving of the survivors. It was even more horrible that they who had fraternised with their fellows in the levelling communism of sympathy, as they huddled side by side, with death staring them in the face, should now thrust their swords into hearts with which their own had so long been beating in fearful sympathy. From this peril the prisoners were again indirectly saved by him whose counsel and encouragement had all along been the direct source of their preservation. If the prisoners were to be killed, equal justice, or injustice, must be dealt to all of them alike, and Julius felt that it would be dastardly ingratitude to butcher the man to whom, under God’s providence, they all owed their rescued lives. He therefore forbade the design of the soldiers, and gave orders that every one who could swim should first fling himself overboard, and get to land. The rest seized hold of planks and other fragments of the fast–dissolving wreck.45 The wind threw them landwards, and at last by the aid of the swimmers all were saved, and—at a spot which, owing to the accurate fidelity of the narrative, can still be exactly identified—a motley group of nearly three hundred drenched, and shivering, and weather–beaten sailors and soldiers, and prisoners and passengers, stood on that chill and stormy November morning upon the desolate and surf–beat shore of the island of Malta. Some, we are sure, there were who joined with Paul in hearty thanks to the God who, though He had not made the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof were still, had yet brought them safe to land, through all the perils of that tempestuous month.