He would have died where he knelt, but for the
peasants who were praying with him, and who, unarmed as they
were, threw themselves like tigers on the soldiery, and at awful
sacrifice of their own lives saved the life of their priest.
There was not a man now on board the ship who would have
hesitated, had the occasion called for it again, to have rescued
him in the same way.
The service began. Since the days when the primitive Christians
worshiped amid the caverns of the earth, can any service be
imagined nobler in itself, or sublimer in the circumstances
surrounding it, than that which was now offered up? Here was no
artificial pomp, no gaudy profusion of ornament, no attendant
grandeur of man's creation. All around this church spread the
hushed and awful majesty of the tranquil sea. The roof of this
cathedral was the immeasurable heaven, the pure moon its one
great light, the countless glories of the stars its only
adornment. Here were no hired singers or rich priest-princes; no
curious sight-seers, or careless lovers of sweet sounds. This
congregation and they who had gathered it together, were all poor
alike, all persecuted alike, all worshiping alike, to the
overthrow of their worldly interests, and at the imminent peril
of their lives. How brightly and tenderly the moonlight shone
upon the altar and the people before it! how solemnly and
divinely the deep harmonies, as they chanted the penitential
Psalms, mingled with the hoarse singing of the freshening night
breeze in the rigging of the ship! how sweetly the still rushing
murmur of many voices, as they uttered the responses together,
now died away, and now rose again softly into the mysterious
night!
Of all the members of the congregation--young or old--there was
but one over whom that impressive service exercised no influence
of consolation or of peace; that one was Gabriel.
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