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"
Too much!--we'll give him one!"
I never shall know how it was--I shudder yet when I think how the place
is given to miracles--but in a single instant of time, as it seemed to
me, that ship was twenty paces from the shore, and speeding away like a
frightened thing! Eight crestfallen creatures stood upon the shore, and
O, to think of it! this--this--after all that overmastering ecstacy!
Oh, shameful, shameful ending, after such unseemly boasting! It was too
much like "Ho! let me at him!" followed by a prudent "Two of you hold
him--one can hold me!"
Instantly there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp. The two
Napoleons were offered--more if necessary--and pilgrims and dragoman
shouted themselves hoarse with pleadings to the retreating boatmen to
come back. But they sailed serenely away and paid no further heed to
pilgrims who had dreamed all their lives of some day skimming over the
sacred waters of Galilee and listening to its hallowed story in the
whisperings of its waves, and had journeyed countless leagues to do it,
and--and then concluded that the fare was too high. Impertinent
Mohammedan Arabs, to think such things of gentlemen of another faith!
Well, there was nothing to do but just submit and forego the privilege of
voyaging on Genessaret, after coming half around the globe to taste that
pleasure. There was a time, when the Saviour taught here, that boats
were plenty among the fishermen of the coasts--but boats and fishermen
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