It was odd how the drops formed.  Slowly they collected at the edge of the tallowed collar, trembled in their fullness for an instant, and fell, another beginning the process instantly.  It amused Abel Keeling to watch them.  Why (he wondered) were all the drops the same size?  What cause and compulsion did they obey that they never varied, and what frail tenuity held the little globules intact?  It must be due to some Cause....  He remembered that the aromatic gum of the wild frankincense with which they had parcelled the seams had hung on the buckets in great sluggish gouts, obedient to a different compulsion; oil was different again, and so were juices and balsams.  Only quicksilver (perhaps the heavy and motionless sea put him in mind of quicksilver) seemed obedient to no law....  Why was it so?

Bligh, of course, would have had his explanation:  it was the Hand of God.  That sufficed for Bligh, who had gone forward the evening before, and whom Abel Keeling now seemed vaguely and as at a distance to remember as the deep-voiced fanatic who had sung his hymns as, man by man, he had committed the bodies of the ship’s company to the deep.  Bligh was that sort of man; accepted things without question; was content to take things as they were and be ready with the fenders when the wall of rock rose out of the opalescent mists.  Bligh, too, like the waterdrops, had his Law, that was his and nobody else’s....

There floated down from some rotten rope up aloft a flake of scurf, that settled in the pipkin.  Abel Keeling watched it dully as it settled towards the pipkin’s rim.  When presently he again dipped his fingers into the vessel the water ran into a little vortex, drawing the flake with it.  The water settled again; and again the minute flake determined towards the rim and adhered there, as if the rim had power to draw it....

It was exactly so that the galleon was gliding towards the wall of rock, the yellow and green weeds, and the monkeys and parrots.  Put out into mid-water again (while there had been men to put her out) she had glided to the other wall.  One force drew the chip in the pipkin and the ship over the tranced sea.  It was the Hand of God, said Bligh....

Abel Keeling, his mind now noting minute things and now clouded with torpor, did not at first hear a voice that was quakingly lifted up over by the forecastle—­a voice that drew nearer, to an accompaniment of swirling water.

"O Thou, that Jonas in the fish
  Three days didst keep from pain,
Which was a figure of Thy death
  And rising up again—­“

It was Bligh, singing one of his hymns: 

"O Thou, that Noah keptst from flood
  And Abram, day by day,
As he along through Egypt passed
  Didst guide him in the way—­“

The voice ceased, leaving the pious period uncompleted.  Bligh was alive, at any rate....  Abel Keeling resumed his fitful musing.

Yes, that was the Law of Bligh’s life, to call things the Hand of God; but Abel Keeling’s Law was different; no better, no worse, only different.  The Hand of God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by some method; and Abel Keeling’s eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if he sought the method there....