“Stop!” he shouted. “Go not hence, I charge you. On your lives I charge you! Turn ye, turn ye: why will ye die? There is no fleeing from Satan. You must resist the devil. He that flies is lost. If you turn your backs upon Apollyon, he will never slacken pace until he has driven you into the troop of his dogs, to go howling about the walls of the city. Stop them, friends of the cross, ere they step beyond the sound of mercy; for, alas! the voice of him who is sent cannot reach beyond the particle of time wherein he speaks: now, this one solitary moment, gleaming out of the eternity before us only to be lost in the eternity behind us—this now is the accepted time; this NOW and no other is the moment of salvation!”
Most of the men recognized the marquis; some near the entrance saw only Malcolm clearing the way: marquis or fisher, it was all the same when souls were at stake: they crowded with one consent to oppose their exit: yet another chance they must have, whether they would or not. These men were in the mood to give—not their own —but those other men’s bodies to be burnt on the poorest chance of saving their souls from the everlasting burnings.
Malcolm would have been ready enough for a fight, had he and the marquis been alone, but the presence of Lady Florimel put it out of the question. Looking round, he sought the eye of his master.
Had Lord Lossie been wise, he would at once have yielded, and sat down to endure to the end. But he jumped on the form next him, and appealed to the common sense of the assembly.
“Don’t you see the man is mad?” he said, pointing to the preacher. “He is foaming at the mouth. For God’s sake look after your women: he will have them all in hysterics in another five minutes. I wonder any man of sense would countenance such things!”
As to hysterics, the fisher-folk had never heard of them; and though the words of the preacher were not those of soberness, they yet believed them the words of truth, and himself a far saner man than the marquis.
“Gien a body comes to oor meetin’,” cried one of them, a fine specimen of the argle-bargling Scotchman—a creature known and detested over the habitable globe—“he maun jist du as we du, an’ sit it oot. It’s for yer sowl’s guid.”
The preacher, checked in full career, was standing with open mouth, ready to burst forth in a fresh flood of oratory so soon as the open channels of hearing ears should be again granted him; but all were now intent on the duel between the marquis and Jamie Ladle.
“If, the next time you came, you found the entrance barricaded,” said the marquis, “what would you say to that?”
“Ow, we wad jist tak doon the sticks,” answered Ladle.