Voyage and Shipwreck
293
sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms. Then fearing,” Luke
writes, “lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors
out of the stern, and wished for the day.”
At break of day the outlines of the stormy coast were dimly visible,
but no familiar landmarks could be seen. So gloomy was the outlook
that the heathen sailors, losing all courage, “were about to flee out of
the ship,” and feigning to make preparations for casting “anchors out
of the foreship,” they had already let down the lifeboat, when Paul,
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perceiving their base design, said to the centurion and the soldiers,
“Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.” The soldiers
immediately “cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her fall off” into the
sea.
The most critical hour was still before them. Again the apostle
spoke words of encouragement, and entreated all, both sailors and
passengers, to take some food, saying, “This day is the fourteenth
day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing.
Wherefore I pray you to take some meat: for this is for your health:
for there shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you.”
“When he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to
God in presence of them all: and when he had broken it, he began to
eat.” Then that worn and discouraged company of two hundred and
seventy-five souls, who but for Paul would have become desperate,
joined with the apostle in partaking of food. “And when they had eaten
enough, they lightened the ship, and cast out the wheat into the sea.”
Daylight had now fully come, but they could see nothing by which
to determine their whereabouts. However, “they discovered a certain
creek with a shore, into the which they were minded, if it were possible,
to thrust in the ship. And when they had taken up the anchors, they
committed themselves unto the sea, and loosed the rudder bands, and
hoisted up the mainsail to the wind, and made toward shore. And
falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground; and
the fore part stuck fast, and remained unmovable, but the hinder part
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was broken with the violence of the waves.”
Paul and the other prisoners were now threatened by a fate more
terrible than shipwreck. The soldiers saw that while endeavoring to
reach land it would be impossible for them to keep their prisoners
in charge. Every man would have all he could do to save himself.
Yet if any of the prisoners were missing, the lives of those who were