w something
about the tempest, and that his god might have caused it. Forthwith
there dawned within him a recollection of words which Jonah had uttered
on embarking. Had he not told them "that he fled from the presence of
the Lord?" "Dear me," the captain probably said to himself, "what a fool
I was not to think of this before. That chap down below is the occasion
of all these troubles; I'll go and hunt him up, confound him!" Thereupon
he doubtless slapped his thigh, as is the wont of sailors when they
solve a difficulty or hit on a brilliant idea; after which he descended
"into the sides of the ship," whither Jonah had gone. There he found the
prophet slumbering as peacefully as a weanling child, with a smile
of satisfaction playing over his Hebrew features. We can imagine the
captain's profound disgust in presence of this scene. He and his men had
been toiling and praying, and, alas! pitching the cargo overboard,
in order to save their skins; and all the while the occasion of their
trouble had been lying fast asleep! Preserving an outward decorum,
however, he accosted Jonah in very mild terms. "What meanest thou, O
sleeper?" said he, "Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will
think upon us, that we perish not."

What exquisite simplicity! It reminds us of the childlike and bland
Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, when he opposed Mr. Brad-laugh's entry to the
House of Commons. That honorable champion of Almighty God objected to
Mr. Bradlaugh on the ground that he acknowledged no God, and was thus
vastly different from the other members of the House, all of whom
"believed in some kind of deity or other." You must have a god to be a
legislator, it seems, even if that god is, as the Americans say, only a
little tin Jesus. So the captain of this tempest-tost ship desired Jonah
to call upon his god. He made no inquiry into the character of the god,
any more than did Sir Henry Drummond Wolff on a later occasion. It was
enough to know that Jonah had "some kind of deity or other." Any god
would do.

Now comes the most remarkable episode in this wonderful story. The
captain and the crew were aware that Jonah had "fled from the presence
of the Lord," because he had told them; they had, therefore, every
reason to believe that Jonah's god had caused the tempest. Yet,
curiously enough, instead of at once proceeding on this belief, they
said, everyone to his fellow, "Come, and let us cast lots, that we may
know for whose cause this