would lift a finger to
disobey him. He said these words in conclusion:

"And now, if there is any one present sufficiently imbued with the grace
of God to fix the anxious minds of these voyagers in prayer, such at
least of them as are powerless otherwise to aid our exertions, let him
appear and minister to their tribulation. This task is not for me,
although the holiest. My duties call me elsewhere."

So adjured, a man, whose wild, fanatical appearance had given rise to
the rumor that the famous "Lorenzo Dow" was on board, sprang on a
bulkhead, and commenced to exhort the crowd about him, from which a file
of pale, determined-looking men was slowly emerging to join the seamen
at the other end of the vessel in their efforts for the public weal. But
many lingered, either overcome and paralyzed by the stringency of
circumstances, or unequal to exertions from personal causes--aged men,
women, and children, chiefly--and to these the frenzied speaker
continued to address his words of exhortation and warning.

Such a tirade of terrible objurgation I felt was entirely out of place
in a scene like this, and calculated to excite the worst passions of the
human mind, instead of persuading it to serenity and submission, so
essential now; for to me the captain's last words represented the final
grace of the preacher, when, with closed eyes and outspread hands, he
dismissed his flock from the temple at the close of the services. From
that vessel and all that concerned it we were virtually enfranchised
from that moment--dismissed to destruction, so to speak, by fire or
flood, or rescue from beyond, as the case might be, to life or death, as
God willed--for the ship's mission was accomplished.

I shrank as far as possible from the wild, waving arms, the frenzied
eyes, the gaunt and wolfish aspect, the piercing, agonized voice of the
fanatic, who had assumed to himself the solemn office of soul-comforter
in a time of extremity. I saw from a distance his long, lank figure
writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the crowd; but his
words were lost on my ear, and I sat leaning back against the bulwark
with folded hands, absorbed in my own thoughts, when a young girl,
bursting from the throng, came and threw herself down before me, and
buried her face in my lap, convulsed with sobs. When she looked up, I
recognized the young person who had bathed my face in the morning during
my partial swoon--a fair and lovely-looking girl o