Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/206

 shudder because they were so great, yet I joyfully and unhesitatingly threw myself into them as into an abyss.’

The priest sighed and sald: ‘You would do better to repent of your sins, and be forgiven by God before you go to be judged.’

But Manoel answered: ‘I repent nothing that I have done. My life has been one single purpose, and what there was of good or bad beside that, I do not know. I think it was of great consequence that I should have gone in every direction of this world and sailed to every quarter, and on my way seen all the oceans and continents. Is it not of the greatest importance that I should have known so many blessed and so many unblessed places, and discovered ever fresh wonders and deeps?’

‘Fear the Last Judgement,’ cried the priest loudly and angrily.

‘It would be just and meet,’ said Manoel, ‘to apply to my life not the judgement of what is good or bad, but of how great have been the distances I have traversed. But now, alas! I am lying on my beam-ends like a ship that has foundered, and can roam no further.’

‘Go to hell, then, pig of a sailor,’ cried the priest, ‘I have never seen a man so stubborn