"Oh, run for the Ark, my onconvarted friends! Don't ye hear
the waves a comin' in? They're a rollin' swift and sure! They're a
rollin' in sure as death! Run for the Ark! Run for the Ark!"
Now, there was in Wallencamp a literal Ark, otherwise this exhortation
would have lacked its most convincing force and significance. But Aunt
Sibylla paused. Among the usually restless audience, there was a moment
of almost breathless suspense. Not half a mile away, behind a strip of
cedar woods, we could plainly hear the surf rolling in from the bay,
breaking hard against the shore with its awful, monotonous moan, moan,
moan.
My heart was already faint with home-sickness. The effect of that waiting
moment was as sombre as anything I had ever experienced. Much to my
distaste, I found myself sympathizing with the vague terror and unrest
around me. I can hear it still, the voice that then rose, singing,
through the sullen gloom of the school-room, a strangely sweet and
rapturous voice--Madeline's. I learned to know it well afterwards. I
listened with rapt surprise to the pathos with which it thrilled the
simple words of the song:--
"Shall we meet beyond the River,
Where the surges cease to roll,
Where, in all the bright forever,
Sorrow ne'er shall press the soul?"
A keenly responsive chord had been touched in the simple, agitated
breasts of the Wallencampers, and they joined in the chorus--those rough
people--not with their usual reckless exuberance of tone, but
plaintively, tremblingly even, as though, whatever the words, they would
make of them a prayer in which to hide some secret doubt or longing of
their souls.
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