"
"Don't preach, David, especially after just telling a fib. A hundred
guineas!"
"I am wrong,"' said David.
"Very wrong, indeed."
"There were eight pounds; and he sold it at a guinea the ounce to a
wholesale chemist, so that looks to me like 128 pounds."
Then David left the whales, and encouraged by bright eyes and winning
smiles, and warm questions, sang higher strains.
Ships in dire distress at sea, yet saved by God's mercy, and the cool,
invincible courage of captain and crew--great ships run ashore--the
waves breaking them up--the rigging black with the despairing crew,
eying the watery death that tumbled and gaped and roared for them
below; and then little shore boats, manned by daring hearts, launched
into the surf, and going out to the great ship and her peril, risking
more life for the chance of saving life. And he did not present the
bare skeletons of daring acts; those grand morgues, the journals, do
that. There lie the dry bones of giant epics waiting Genius's hand to
make them live. He gave them not only the broad outward facts--the
bones; but those smaller touches that are the body and soul of a
story, true or false, wanting which the deeds of heroes sound an
almanac; above all, he gave them glimpses, not only of what men acted,
but what they felt: what passed in the hearts of men perishing at sea,
in sight of land, houses, fires on the hearth, and outstretched hands,
and in the hearts of the heroes that ran their boats into the surf and
Death's maw to save them, and of the lookers on, admiring, fearing,
shivering, glowing, and of the women that sobbed and prayed ashore
with their backs to the sea, just able to risk lover, husband, and son
for the honor of manhood and the love of Christ, but not able to look
on at their own flesh and blood diving so deep, and lost so long in
cockle-shells between the hills of waves.
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