The Cloud

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including non-standard spelling and a misquotation of John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields".

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THE CLOUD

BY SARTELL PRENTICE

"Behold there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand"

[Publisher's mark]

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright 1918 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

TO MY WIFE

A Cloud Like a Man's Hand

Up on the crest of Carmel a man stood watching. Before him lay the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, to the North the curving Bay of Acre, while to the south the white surf was breaking on the reefs of Philistia.

At the other end of the long Carmel ridge another man stood waiting. Before his eyes the great Plain of Esdraelon lay extended with the hills of Galilee to the North and the great bulk of Mt. Gilboa, faint in the summer haze, bounding the vision to the East.

Seven times the Watcher had climbed to the Western crest of Carmel; six times he had returned to report that there was nothing to be seen, and seven times he had been bidden, "Go up again; look towards the sea." Now at last he knew that his vigil was ended; something had risen above the horizon that told him his watch was past. It was a very little thing; yet it sent him speeding back along the mountain's ridge until he came again to the man who was waiting. "Behold," he said, "There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand." And the man who waited sent word to a King of Israel, saying, "Prepare thy chariot."

A man's hand is a very little thing, frail and weak, but we have seen a cloud like a man's hand, a man's hand clad in armor, rising up beyond the sea. The shadow of that cloud fell on Poland, and Poland died. It fell on Russia, and a great Empire went down in darkness and eclipse. It fell on Serbia, and blotted her out, on Roumania, and Roumania passed into bondage. It fell on Belgium, and Belgium cried out a little and then grew still. That shadow fell on France and even the trees withered and died. It stretched out over the sea and touched the Lusitania, and she crumpled and went down, carrying with her 120 American dead. And now that shadow falls upon our own shores and darkens the streets and homes of our towns and cities. So to-day the summons has gone forth to every American, "Prepare thy chariot!" Each one of us has his own--not to all of us is the same kind given. To some of us it is the Red Cross, to others it is the voice or the pen, to every one of us it is the buying of Liberty Bonds, to some of us it is the Training Camp, the Trench, and the Battlefield. But to every man, woman, and child of us the hour has come to "Prepare our chariots." For America has willed with all her might, her soul, her strength, that the shadow of that "Cloud like a man's hand" shall forever pass away; that it shall no longer rest on Poland, Russia, Serbia, Roumania, Belgium, France or on our own America, but that Liberty, Justice, and Democracy shall shine in an unclouded sky and that no shadow of a man's mailed fist shall darken either the homes or the hearts of men.