“From Thence They Sailed”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 259, 30 September 1936, Page 11

“From Thence They Sailed”

IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL

bp H. V. MORTON

(Article No. 18)

unloading two hundred goats on the sunny dock at Haifa, the cargo boat moved off to sea. She was small, smelly, but interesting. There were twelve cabin passengers, chiefly Syrians and Jews. The cabins were small, hot cells in a dark passage. The doors opened to views of the ship’s intimate domestic life: the Greek cook bent with malicious enthusiasm over a cauldron of soup, his assistant walking about with a dead chicken; the Egyptian engineer descended the steel ladder to his thumping, rhythmic engines. About thirty miserable-looking Arabs, with their shrouded wives, occupied the third-class deck aft, where, as the ship gracefully rose and sank in the white thrash of her propeller, a veiled woman would now and then totter to tho side and shamelessly uncover her features to tho heaving deep.

Nobody Cared. The husband, who normally would have divorced her had she done this in public, lay with closed eyes, moistening his lips from time to time and automatically telling the amber heads of his kombologion. In the dark hatchway under the fo’c’sle lay a number of Syrian- cows on their way to Egypt. They chewed the cud philosophically, and allowed turkeys and hens to walk round, and even over, them.

TN the small saloon I encountered A the only English passenger drinking a glass of beer, while the Greek Steward hit out at flies with a table napkin. He was a large, cheerful middle-aged man, who had been settled in Palestine since the war. “I came out and stayed out,” he

said. ‘No, I never get homesick. I like the climate. Dash it all, man, we’ve a short enough life. Why should wo spend half of it in fog and tainP” He told me he was going over to Cyprus to inquire about orange-grow-ing. "“It’s a wonderful climate and a wonderful soil,” he said. I asked him why so many Arabs were travelling to Cyprus. “You mean the fellows who are being sea-sick? Oh, they’re going to Cyprus to buy wives. There’s a big trade with wives between Cyprus and the mainland. Not only are they highly esteemed —Cyprus was always famous for love, you know—but they are much cheaper than in Syria and Palestine. An Arab can get married far cheaper in Cyprus than in Syria or Palestine. ...” All that afternoon I sat in the hot sunlight of the deck watching the coast of Palestine fade to a brown line on the sky. I was at last really off in the steps of St. Paul, to Cyprus first and then, I hoped, back again to Turkey and across Asia Minor to Macedonia. As I looked at the small cargo boat I thought that, ■ although the great harbours of the Roman age are now ruined and desolate, the commerce Of the Mediterranean is much the same as in St. Paul’s time. There was little difference between this ship going to Cyprus in the year 19136 and the cargopassenger vessels on which the Apostle sailed from place to place ill the yeal-s A.D. 45-60.

or the feeling that he was doing anything out of the ordinary, on the most ambitious journeys. The background of his wandering is the enormous, peaceful background of the Roman Empire, where ships, so far as possible in days of sail, reached their destination in time: where magnificent roads, for which to-day a nian looks in vain, crossed the mighty territory of the Near East, all leading, like the spokes of a wheel, to the hub and centre of the world—Rome. * TT is true that the danger of shipwreck was greater in Paul’s time than in ours. He was three times shipwrecked and once adrift for a day and a night on a raft. 33 r e know details only one shipwreck, the Alalta shipwreck, and of the others only from a casual reference in Paul’s heated Second Epistle to the Corinthians. How interesting it would he if we had full details of all these disasters. It was the practice in ancient times to lay up ships in tho winter so that traffic practically ceased in the Alcdi- 1 terranean from November to March, j Even in good weather only big ves-! sels, such as the Alexandrian corn- j ships, were fond of the open sea. The i average merchant ship preferred when : possible to hug the coast, often land-1 ing her pasengers for the night and sailing on in the morning. | It is clear that many of Paul’s voyages must have been conducted in this way. I watched the sun go down, and at bed-time went to my cabin heavy with sleep. 33’hen I touched the pillow three fat and glistening cockroaches ran from under it and disappeared be-

tween the bunk and the ship’s side. I Once you get cockroaches in a ship ■ in a hot climate you can never get rid of them. I don’t mind fleas, and 1 can train myself to endure other tilings, but cockroaches I loathe. 1 cannot stand their long, bent legs, the speed they achieve, and the feeling that they are just about to liit horrible black-brown wings and fly. Therefore, shaking out a couple of blankets, I went up and spent the night on deck. I shall never forget that night. The moon was not full, but for an hour or so an intense silver light lay over the sea, and there was no sound hut the soft hiss of water against the ship. In the middle of the night I awakened to find myself gazing up at a moonless sky covered with stars. Our riding light moved against them like a little moon. I watched grey light come to the world. The ship swung on a sea the colour of lead, and the Stars faded. In this queer between-time I saw a shadow on the sea and knew that it was the long, eastward thrust of Cyprus. More light came, but still the sun did not rise. Then, with a feeling of relief and happiness, I saw the east streaked with uneasy lines of pink that grew stronger second by second until, with a burst of yellow light, the sun jumped out of the sea. And I saw a long, brown and green coast with great mountains rising inland, and, with the sun shining on it, the little white town of Larnaku, with its feet iii blue water. (To be continued.)

TTE must have been familiar with the same odd mixture of men and beasts at sea : the huddled forms of unhappy Jews, Greeks, and Syrians, lying wrapped in their cloaks, or stretched like diad men on the deck. He must have heard the lowing and stamping of cattle at sea. He must have seen Negro deck hands moving the cargo, just as I saw all these sights on a sunny afternoon as the ship went over a blue sea to Cyprus.

I think one of the things that impresses a student of the Acts of the Apostles is the ease and certainty with which Paul travelled about the world, lie set out without the slightest fuss-