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1"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in
2the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas
3Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere
4he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a
5fugitive; but at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out
6his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any
7way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his passage. 'Point out my state-room, Sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm
8travel-weary; I need sleep.' 'Thou lookest like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thy room.' Jonah enters, and would lock
9the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and
10mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as
11he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The
12air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the
13heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.
14"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over
15towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still
16maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made
17obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his
18tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But
19that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. 'Oh! so my
20conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'
21"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as
22the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as one who in that miserable
23plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid
24the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the
25wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery
26drags him drowning down to sleep. "And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the
27deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of
28recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm
29comes on, the ship is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her; when boxes, bales, and
30jars are clattering overboard; when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with
31trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky
32and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which
33even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the
34ship--a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks
35in his dead ear, 'What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!' Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers
36to his feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon
37by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs
38roaring fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon shows her
39affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high
40upward, but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep. "Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In
41all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark him; more and more certain grow
42their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they fall
43to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how
44furiously they mob him with their questions. 'What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people?'
45But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from;
46whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer to a question not put by them,
47but the unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him. "'I am a Hebrew,' he
48cries--and then--'I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!' Fear him, O Jonah? Aye,
49well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners
50became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but
51too well knew the darkness of his deserts,--when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him forth into
52the sea, for he knew that for his sake this great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by
53other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to
54God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah. "And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped
55into the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is still, as Jonah carries down the
56gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he
57scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory
58teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe
59his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He
60feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that
61spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful
62repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is
63shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be
64copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent
65of it like Jonah." While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add
66new power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest
67heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away
68from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear
69that was strange to them. There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves of the Book once
70more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.
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