'We sail with the next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered,
still intently eyeing him. 'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon enough for any
honest man that goes a passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another stab.
But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent.
'I'll sail with ye,'--he says,--'the passage money how much is that?--
I'll pay now.' For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it
were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, 'that he paid
the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail. And taken with the context,
this is full of meaning.
"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects
crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless.
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel
freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper,
is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares
to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere he judge him openly.
He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented to.
Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same
time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold.
Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still
molest the Captain.
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