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Updated: May 20, 2025
The raid that night succeeded admirably, but ingenious as Shard was on land, and a past-master at sea, yet it must be admitted that lack of experience in this class of seamanship led him to make a mistake, a slight one it is true, and one that a little practice would have prevented altogether: the oxen could not gallop.
For a quarter of a mile Shard steered them through the forest till they came to the ten men and that bad big tree, another foot had yet to come off one corner of the stump for the wheels had to pass over it. Shard turned all hands on to the stump and it was then that the Arabs came within shot. But they had to unpack their gun. And before they had it mounted Shard was away.
In all the landscape there was naught that spoke of a spring to come of warmth and growth; rather did it seem a shard of some disinherited planet under the eternal rule of deadly cold. All of her life had Maria known this cold, this snow, the land's death-like sleep, these austere and frowning woods; now was she coming to view them with fear and hate.
Shard swore at them, threatened them with his pistol, said they should have no food, and all to no avail: that night and as long as they pulled the bad ship Desperate Lark they did one knot an hour and no more. Shard's failures like everything that came his way were used as stones in the edifice of his future success, he went at once to his chart-room and worked out all his calculations anew.
And they made a deputation and waited upon Captain Shard, all of them sober and wearing their costly clothes, and they said that the Mediterranean was a trap, and all he said was that the North wind should hold. And the crew said they were done. So they entered the Mediterranean and the English fleet came up and closed the straits.
You're too green yet to be left alone all night in this town. Not a word. You stay with Emmons. In the morning I will let you know of a plan I am considering. It may be good for you." Captain Shard gathered up his reins, nodded carelessly, and went off down the street in a small cloud of dust. Ralph went into the stable, not seeing clearly how to refuse, though hardly at ease in his mind.
Ah! type, too, of our life, which also is earth-sown, earth-rooted; which must struggle upward, be cut down, rotted and broken, ere the separation take place between our dross and our worth poor perishable shard and immortal fibre.
It must be remembered that in the affair of the dropping of the wind and again when they ran out of water these men were at their wits' end: so was Shard on the last occasion, but that they did not know. All this Shard knew, and he chose this occasion to strengthen the reputation that he had in the minds of the men of that bad ship by explaining to them his motives, which usually he kept secret.
At first Shard made the oxen wear rough iron bits, another of his mistakes, and strong bits too. "For if they run away," he had said, "we might as well be driving before a gale and there's no saying where we'd find ourselves," but after a day or two he found that the bits were no good and, like the practical man he was, immediately corrected his mistake.
Another Jewish traveller calmed the sea by naming God, another by writing the sacred Name on a shard, and casting it into the sea. "Have no care," said he, on another occasion, to his Arab comrade, as the shadows fell on a Friday afternoon, and they were still far from home, "have no care, we shall arrive before nightfall," and, exercising his wonderworking powers, he was as good as his word.
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