And Verily, I Think Their God Was Amazed
Thereat; It Could Not Be But That He Must Blush For Shame, He Can Speak
Never A Word For Dulness, Much Less Can He Help Them In Such An
Extremity.
Well, howsoever it is, he is very much to blame to suffer
them to receive such a gibe.
But howsoever their god behaved himself,
our God showed Himself a God indeed, and that He was the only living
God; for the seas were swift under His faithful, which made the enemies
aghast to behold them; a skilfuller pilot leads them, and their
mariners bestir them lustily; but the Turks had neither mariners,
pilot, nor any skilful master, that was in readiness at this pinch.
When the Christians were safe out of the enemy's coast, John Fox called
to them all, telling them to be thankful unto Almighty God for their
delivery, and most humbly to fall down upon their knees, beseeching Him
to aid them to their friends' land, and not to bring them into another
danger, since He had most mightily delivered them from so great a
thraldom and bondage.
Thus when every man had made his petition, they fell straightway to
their labour with the oars, in helping one another when they were
wearied, and with great labour striving to come to some Christian land,
as near as they could guess by the stars. But the winds were so
contrary, one while driving them this way, another while that way, so
that they were now in a new maze, thinking that God had forsaken them
and left them to a greater danger. And forasmuch as there were no
victuals now left in the galley, it might have been a cause to them (if
they had been the Israelites), to have murmured against their God; but
they knew how that their God, who had delivered Egypt, was such a
loving and merciful God, as that He would not suffer them to be
confounded in whom He had wrought so great a wonder, but what calamity
soever they sustained, they knew it was but for their further trial,
and also (in putting them in mind of their further misery), to cause
them not to triumph and glory in themselves therefor. Having, I say,
no victuals in the galley, it might seem one misery continually to fall
upon another's neck; but to be brief the famine grew to be so great
that in twenty-eight days, wherein they were on the sea, there died
eight persons, to the astonishment of all the rest.
So it fell out that upon the twenty-ninth day after they set from
Alexandria, they fell on the isle of Candia, and landed at Gallipoli,
where they were made much of by the abbot and monks there, who caused
them to stay there while they were well refreshed and eased. They kept
there the sword wherewith John Fox had killed the keeper, esteeming it
as a most precious relic, and hung it up for a monument.
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