IT WAS a fearful storm. The sea ran mountains high, and thick banks of gray clouds in the sky above darned and blackened as night drew on. The waters of the English Channel throbbed and heaved under their garment of white foam, and upon their uneasy bosom many a gallant ship rode to its doom.
Among others — driven like a snowflake before the wind — rushed a coasting vessel. The “Ocean Queen” looked anything but regal with her torn sails — gleaming a ghostly white in spite of their red ochre color — water-swept decks, and streaming pennon. Poor “Ocean Queen,” with her figure-head often buried in the green embrace of a monstrous wave, and her mast even dipping its head into the drifting spray.
On the upper deck stood Captain Owen, issuing commands in a calm, strong voice. He and his crew had often weathered a storm such as this, but the wind blew “on” shore this time, and there was little hope for the poor “Ocean Queen.”
At last nothing was left but to abandon her to her fate.
“Lower the boats!” shouted Captain Owen, for one instant covering his eyes with his brown hands, and then directing again with quiet dignity.
Lowered they were — in almost less time than it takes me to write these words — and then one and all took places in them.
The last to swing over the vessel’s side was Captain Owen. It was a hard wrench for him. He had commanded on board the “Ocean Queen” for many a long year, and he loved every plank of her. Still his sailors’ lives were in his hands, and he could not jeopardize them.
If only he had known it, Captain Owen and his crew would have been saved if they had clung to the wreck.
She was cast up by a huge wave upon the rocks, and when the wind lulled, the ebbing tide left her there high and dry.
The little boats that left the vessel were never seen again. In the waters of the deep ocean, Captain Owen and his men found a sailor’s grave.
All that day and night the fisher population on the coast of Cornwall had kept a sharp look out. In many places a welcome light had guided a vessel into a safe port, and willing hands had helped to save the crews of many a doomed ship.
As the sun rose calmly on the morning after the great storm, it showed the shore here and there strewn with the timbers of some wrecked vessel; but it shone also upon the living faces and forms of many “cast up by the sea,” and tended into strength again by the kindly Cornish folks.
In one small bay, girt about with terrible rocks, the sun revealed the hull and bulwarks of the “Ocean Queen,” resting high and dry on their rocky bed. Quickly the coastguard were apprised of the fact, and they hurried to make a search within her.
In the Captain’s cabin a hymn book was found lying on the table. It was open at a particular page, and the pencil that had marked the favorite lines of the sailor still lay in it.
Yes! Captain Owen had been called to his death as he was penciling a line down one page. The words he had marked were ones of glorious cheer to the man just entering the jaws of death. They accounted for his calmness in the hour of danger, and, as they were read solemnly and slowly in that deserted cabin, they spoke a wondrous sermon on “faith” to the assembled searchers.
“Jesus, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the billows near me roll,
While the tempest still is high;
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide
Till the storm of life is past!
Safe into the haven guide:
Oh, receive my soul at last.”
And, though by a stormy path, we are sure that He, whose footsteps are on the deep waters, did receive the soul of His servant.
Dear reader, may there be as blessed a certainty as to your being safe on the Rock of Ages, when your time comes, as there is to Captain Owen’s hiding place being in the bosom of the Saviour.
ML-03/13/1960