“Master, the tempest is raging! 
    The billows are tossing high! 
  The sky is o’ershadowed with blackness,
    No shelter or help is nigh;

  “Carest Thou not that we perish? 
    How canst Thou lie asleep,
  When each moment so madly is threat’ning
    A grave in the angry deep?”

Sweetly, yet mysteriously and sadly, the notes of the song floated on the evening breeze down to the valley.  Once, when the lady tried the song for the first time, thousands of people cried.  Today only a small company of listeners cried, but I think that even the woods and the brooks and everything round wept also.  Above all of them wept Bacha Filina.  Palko who sat next to him laid his arm around his neck and cried with him.  He understood him.  Thus perished once the ship that carried Stephen.  It sank in the terrible depths with him.  In vain they waited, in vain they called.  Uncle Filina would never see him again.

The boys did not dream, nor the helpers of Bacha, that anything existed as beautiful as that which was hidden in the lady’s throat.  You could almost hear the crashings of the breaking ship, and feel the hopelessness of the situation.  It ended like sad, soft wailings of the perishing ones.  The lady noticed the weeping her song had awakened.  She realized that it would not be easy to stop it.  Then she did something which that very morning she would have been in doubt that she would be able to do.  She sang a song hidden in her memory from her old home, and which she had hated with her whole heart, because she could not forget it.

  “My faith looks up to Thee,
  Thou Lamb of Calvary,
    Saviour Divine! 
  Now hear me while I pray,
  Take all my guilt away,
  Oh, let me from this day
    Be wholly Thine!

  “May Thy rich grace impart
  Strength to my fainting heart,
    My zeal inspire! 
  As Thou hast died for me,
  Oh, may my love to Thee,
  Pure, warm, and changeless be,
    A living fire!

  “While life’s dark maze I tread,
  And griefs around me spread,
    Be Thou my guide;
  Bid darkness turn to day,
  Wipe sorrow’s tears away,
  Nor let me ever stray
    From Thee aside.

  “When ends life’s transient dream,
  When death’s cold, sullen stream
    Shall o’er me roll;
  Blest Saviour, then, in love,
  Fear and distrust remove;
  Oh, bear me safe above,
    A ransomed soul!”

Perhaps nowhere and never before, were those beautiful lines sung so impressively.  When she stopped, Bacha Filina stood near her and very seriously said, “Thank you, Madame Slavkovsky, for that precious song.  You have shown me great kindness thereby.  Your beautiful ballad opened a deep wound in my heart which was not quite healed.  It almost seemed that I must die because of it, but this holy song healed it again.  God bless you for it!  But one thing I must ask you:  let us write this song down, and you must teach us the melody that we may cheer ourselves with it in life and death.”