125 CHAP. IV. THE SHIPWRECK. THE ship now approaches the termination of her disastrous voyage. Land is not, indeed, in sight, but to the watchful senses of the "shipmen" the sound or appearance of breakers tells them that it is near, or, in the nautical language of St. Luke, that it is approaching. Such indications are the usual harbingers of destruction; here they call forth a display of presence of mind, promptitude, and seamanship, which could not be surpassed in the present day, and by which, under Providence, the lives of all on board were saved. However appalling the alarm of breakers may be to a ship unexpectedly falling in with the land on an unknown coast, and in a dark and stormy night, it afforded in the present case a chance at least of safety. The hope which was taken away is restored. They can now adopt the last resource for a sinking ship, and run her ashore; but to do so before it was day would have been to have rushed on certain destruction. They must bring the ship, if it be possible, to anchor, and hold on till day-break, when they may perhaps discover some "creek with a shore," into which they may be able to "thrust the ship." The progress of the narrative has brought us to the question, Whether the traditional locality is in reality that of the shipwreck? Now, if we attend minutely to the narrative, it will be seen that the number of conditions required to be fulfilled, in order to make any locality agree with it, are so numerous as to render it morally impossible to suppose that the agreement which we find here can be the effect of chance. The first circumstance mentioned is, that at midnight the shipmen suspected the vicinity of land evidently without seeing it. The ship was driving from Clauda; her previous track must have been at such a distance from the land, and the land itself must be so low, as to prevent its being seen. Now, upon laying down the track of a ship driving in that direction to St. Paul's Bay, on Admiral Smyth's chart of Malta, I find that the land, which in that part of the island is very low, nowhere approaches within a mile of it*, but that it is impossible to enter the bay without passing within a quarter of a mile of a low rocky point, which juts out and forms its eastern entrance (the point of Koura). When the Lively, frigate, unexpectedly fell in with this very point, the quarter-master on the look-out, who first observed it, states, in his evidence at the court-martial, that at the distance of a quarter of a mile the land could not be seen, but that he saw the surf on the shore. Here, then, we establish the explanation of a hitherto unexplained passage of Scripture, by the oath of a competent witness. Till the ship arrived at the entrance of the bay they could not be aware of the vicinity of land; when they did come to it, they could * Off Valetta the distance of the track of a ship from Clauda to St. Paul's Bay is three miles; it gradually diminishes to one mile. |