Still the beacon blazed in the grate of old Roger de Blonay, and flaring torches glided along the strand.  The shore seemed alive with human beings, able as themselves to appreciate and to feel for their situation.

The deck was now cleared, and the travellers were collected in a group between the masts.  Pippo had lost all his pleasantry under the dread signs of the hour, and Conrad, trembling with superstition and terror, was free from hypocrisy.  They, and those with them, discoursed on their chances, on the nature of the risks they ran, and on its probable causes.

“I see no image of Maria, nor even a pitiful lamp to any of the blessed, in this accursed bark!” said the juggler, after several had hazarded their quaint and peculiar opinions.  “Let the patron come forth, and answer for his negligence.”

The passengers were about equally divided between those who dissented from and those who worshipped with Rome.  This proposal, therefore, met with a mixed reception.  The latter protested against the neglect, while the former, equally under the influence of abject fear, were loud in declaring that the idolatry itself might cost them all their lives.

“The curse of heaven alight on the evil tongue that first uttered the thought!” muttered the trembling Pippo between his teeth, too prudent to fly openly in the face of so strong an opposition, and yet too credulous not to feel the omission in every nerve—­“Hast nothing by thee, pious Conrad, that may avail a Christian?”

The pilgrim reached forth his hand with a rosary and cross.  The sacred emblem passed from mouth to mouth, among the believers, with a zeal little short of that they had manifested in unloading the deck.  Encouraged by this sacrifice, they called loudly upon Baptiste to present himself.  Confronted with these unnurtured spirits, the patron shook in every limb, for, between anger and abject fear, his self-command had by this time absolutely deserted him.  To the repeated appeals to procure a light, that it might be placed before a picture of the mother of God which Conrad produced, he objected his Protestant faith, the impossibility of maintaining the flame while the bark pitched so violently, and the divided opinions of the passengers.  The Catholics bethought them of the country and influence of Maso, and they loudly called upon him, for the love of God! to come and enforce their requests.  But the mariner was occupied on the forecastle, lowering one anchor after another into the water, passively assisted by the people of the bark, who wondered at a precaution so useless, since no rope could reach the bottom, even while they did not dare deny his orders.  Something was now said of the curse that had alighted on the vessel, in consequence of its patron’s intention to embark the headsman.  Baptiste trembled to the skin of his crown, and his blood crept with a superstitious awe.

“Dost think there can really be aught in this!” he asked, with parched lips and a faltering tongue.