7

An absence of Yankees proved a blessing the next day.

This morning, bright and early we discovered a crack in our propeller. Which, if it had not been seen, might have proved fatal to us. To get the propeller up so it can be worked at was our trouble.

The crack was noticeable only because Whittle had thought to raise the propeller a little above the waterline on leaving the port of Tristan da Cunha to prevent its being ensnarled in the thick beds of kelp and also to keep it ready for rapid deployment. The fault line in the metal augured great peril. Shenandoah was not quite paralyzed—good sailing winds blew her ninety-nine miles eastward that day—but without her propeller she was just another sailing ship, days from a major landmass, lightly armed, easy prey for any hostile man-of-war. And with the debris from that burnt whaler bobbing in the ocean behind her, not to mention all those stranded Portuguese eager for conversation with any Yankee that happened into the island’s harbor, Shenandoah was as good as a marked ship.

There was no question what must be done.

As our propeller is to us our life, we stopped all work to have it fixed.

This was hardly as easy as it sounded. Though hoisted—indeed “triced”—above the water’s surface, free of its driveshaft, the great heavy blade remained beyond reach of Mathew O’Brien, the resourceful chief engineer. The blade, when not in use, rose by design into its own storage compartment—called the well—where it was virtually inaccessible. It would have to be raised considerably higher—a chore difficult enough in harbor, and fiendishly hazardous in a pitching, swelling sea. Shipboard routine ceased as the crew bent to the emergency. Their first task was to pry the roof off the pilothouse, which covered the top of the well and blocked the blade’s vertical path. That done, climbers scrambled up the mizzenmast with thick ropes and pulleys slung over their shoulders. These they looped over the spanker-bolt, which anchored the great diagonal spanker boom that angled out above the ship’s stern. Securing the bottom ends of the rope to the propeller blade, the men descended and hauled with all their might until the ponderous mass of metal, thirteen feet long and weighing many tons, rose from its wooden housing. A thick block of wood was wedged below it to give it some stability, and the blacksmith hurried to his surgical task.

O’Brien’s first close look at the blade revealed a sobering fact. The crack—in a brass bearing—was not new.

“It is an old break, and has been done for a long time, as we saw where the screws had been put in to repair it,” Whittle noted. They could also see that the crack had worked its way farther into the bearing since that repair.

This problem likely went unreported to the prospective purchaser, Bulloch, who had been eager to buy Sea King as quickly and quietly as possible. The ship, when Bulloch struck his deal, had just returned from her record-setting run and pushed her innovative design to its limits. The resulting cracks and strains demanded extensive repair, probably the result of a “design” that did not live up to its innovative theory. But Bulloch was hamstrung: the likelihood of Adams’s spies growing even more interested in their work inhibited the prudent officer from getting any more repairs done in England.

Shenandoah, in other words, had been steaming on borrowed time. But at least the problem was now out in the open and available for repair.

Fixing the blade would require precision work—work normally done by metallurgists, machinists, and blacksmiths. Since few such specialists were on call in the South Atlantic, Mr. O’Brien would have to adapt as best he could: a sort of nautical family doctor called on to perform neurosurgery. Balancing himself halfway up the seesawing mizzenboom, leaning in to the giant shard of glistening metal precariously stabilized on its block of wood, the Louisianan undertook to perform a heroic feat of mechanical engineering thirty feet above Shenandoah’s stern.

The weather had grown rowdy, “disagreeable in the extreme, cloudy, overcast, foggy, damp and cold. A Yankee might be within six miles of us and he would be as safe as if he were a hundred.”

As crewmen below shot him anxious glances, the daring engineer, assisted by two and sometimes three men, improvised the salvation of the propeller, heating the metal with bellows and coals, hammering it, tediously extracting the old screws. He was forced to abandon his perch at nightfall; but the next foggy morning, he was back in the rigging. As the hours dragged along, chimed by O’Brien’s clanging and cursing in the rigging above, Lieutenant Whittle’s hunger for engagement overtook him again. He seemed almost to assume that O’Brien would accomplish the impossible; in his mind, the propeller grew whole again, and the lieutenant seethed for the chase.

I wish it would clear off for I am very, very anxious to catch another fellow. I am always glad to catch them and very glad to get rid of them. The hitch is that I hate them so much that I find it hard to have my wants gratified. The more we catch the happier I will be.

Mr. O’Brien’s wizardry in the rigging, when finally accomplished, earned him a brisk nod in Whittle’s log on December 9:

This afternoon our Chief Engineer finished work on our propeller, and we lowered it in its place and unrigged all our purchases and commenced refitting the pilot house. I am delighted to know that we are again in running order.

But were they? Could the jury-rigged screws and brass plate meet the operational demands of an intact propeller? Or might it crack into fragments and go spinning to the ocean depths in the midst of a life-or-death encounter? No one knew for sure. Everyone wondered.

Perhaps this nagging dread ignited yet another crisis of shipboard discipline even as O’Brien hammered.

John Williams (colored), Ship’s Cook, and George Flood, were brought to the mast for fighting. I found that the former had called the latter a violent and outrageous name. And I justified Flood, and triced up Williams. Here was a Negro against a Yankee. I had trouble in bringing him to his bearings but he finally came down.

More questions, then: Would this crew of strays, misfits, and strangers never cohere? Would Shenandoah cannibalize herself before any Yankee could fire a shot at her? Whatever Williams called Flood—“son of a bitch” seems a likely candidate—had perhaps been inspired by some prior insult, some slur by a white man against a black—a black, moreover, whose presence aboard a Confederate warship was not entirely voluntary: the high-strung Williams was the “darkie” who had signed on from D. Godfrey in early November. (It could hardly have gladdened Whittle that the man Williams’s insult had placed on the moral high ground was a Yankee.)

Yet none of this really mattered. Order, not personal preference—not even justice—was the highest value for any naval officer worth his salt. Whittle had listened to both parties in the fracas and made an instant decision, as he knew he must. Did Williams continue to scream out his violated honor even as he hung, muscles grotesquely distended, above the deck? (“I had trouble in bringing him to his bearings…”) Then Williams would have to keep screaming as long as he could stand the pain (“…but he finally came down”). Order before honor—at least the crewmen’s honor. For Whittle, Waddell, and the other officers, order was honor. But when, oh when, would order aboard this ship be understood as the supreme honor for all?

A hundred forty miles on this ugly, fog-draped day—latitude 30 degrees 37–30 minutes south, longitude 7 degrees 7 minutes west. The next day, a Friday, Whittle called for a “general quarters drill.” Jack Grimball, a seasoned South Carolinian and Whittle’s most reliable subordinate, whipped the crew through a thorough enactment of procedure under attack. The timing of the exercise was no accident: Whittle sensed the sailors’ anxiety generated by the questionable propeller; a renewed sense of collective action—and risk—might refocus their energies.

The results, however, proved less than reassuring. The ship’s two cannons remained ill-balanced and cumbersome, their weight abrading the forward “dumb-trucks” built to contain their recoil. “These I hope will soon wear up to their proper places.”

Nor was that the extent of it:

I do wish that our ports were in proper order, but as yet all we can boast of is that there is a round hole through which the muzzles of the guns point. If, however, we were to get in a fight, all “ginger bread” work would come down and we would do our best, however poor that might be, but I trust that we will have no fighting to do as we would fare very badly. I am very anxious to catch Yanks. But when Yanks are Tartars I want to let them alone.

On that happy note, Shenandoah slogged on.

A hundred fifty-three miles on Sunday under winds from the southwest. “Another day of rest,” Whittle noted gratefully—a rest interrupted by only one tricing incident, this involving the Frenchman named Louis Rowe, the aggrieved party in the fight with Thomas Hall. This time it was Rowe who asked for trouble, by disobeying the orders from Acting Master’s Mate Minor. Rowe went through the predictable stages of rage, denial, and acceptance.

At first, with the usual excitability of a Frenchman, he became very angry, and commenced using very improper language when I had him gagged. He was very determined not to be subdued, but I brought him down by tricing him a little higher each time. When I took him down, he was like a lamb.

Tricing had become nearly as ingrained in the daily round as mess. It scarcely registered now as a break in the routine—it was routine.

Oh how rapidly does time fly. Summer seems to have just gone and here it is again. I’ve been somewhat disappointed today, as I had hoped that we would have caught a Yankee, as Sunday seems to be our lucky day. A nice breeze sprang up today, and we very easily glided along.

Whittle read his prayer book to himself, then succumbed to the deep yearning that was the constant mirror image of his lust for conquest. He foraged in his personal mailbag for letters from his Pattie: not new ones—fresh mail was among the simple pleasures sacrificed aboard a raiding ship—but well-worn ones whose contents he had no doubt virtually memorized.

Oh how much I would give to hear from her. If but to know that my darling is well. I read these letters as, next to later ones,^*5 they are most dear. No wonder I should love her so profoundly. She has been at all times so devotedly attached to me. God grant her health and happiness.

By Monday, December 12, under light winds out of the southwest, Shenandoah had entered the eastern hemisphere, cruising across zero longitude in heavily rolling seas. Still southwest of Capetown and her infamous waves, Whittle kept his men busy at rigging repair—“We now have every piece of running gear with one or two exceptions of manila rope, and this, too, all captured from our prizes”—and drilling at the guns under Grimball. It was not just storms that concerned Whittle. The U.S. Navy was known to patrol the waters off Capetown routinely. “I sincerely wish we had our ports fixed as they ought to be, but I fear it will be a long, long time before I can so congratulate myself.” The questionable propeller remained triced above the water.

The ship’s rolling motion, its precarious metronoming between immense waves and breathtaking troughs, drew Whittle’s attention—not because of seasickness, which affected only landlubbers, but for its effect on her progress. “And for rolling, I think, the Shenandoah goes ahead.” This was testament to navigator Bulloch’s prowess at converting the high waves’ perpendicular impact on the long ship into energy impelling her forward motion. The raider covered 142 miles that day.

She had a destination now, although it was not written in the log; no use confirming her mission to some Yankee visitor. She was headed for Australia.

Australia was a terrible risk. The likelihood of Federal gunships in the vast coastal waters and in the port at Melbourne was overwhelming. Indeed it was with misgivings that Bulloch had even sent a second supply ship, John Frazer, to meet them in Melbourne. Anticipating her need for an additional load of coal, Bulloch wanted her on hand in case the British were to deny Shenandoah even the right to refuel. Yet Whittle could see little choice. His men needed fresh produce for their health; the ship needed materials and repair work that could only be obtained at harbor. (The nagging question of prisoners of war—a new supply of which Whittle fully expected to harvest any day now—could be solved by lawfully depositing them on the continent.)

The most compelling reason, though, lay in Shenandoah’s irreducible mission: to seek out and destroy enemy ships. To “hunt where the ducks are” might not yet have entered the vernacular of his countrymen. But that is exactly what Conway Whittle intended on doing.

Well before sailing into those dangerous waters, however, Whittle would have to address a crisis nearer at hand, virtually at his elbow—a crisis that would beggar the repeated incidents of shipboard fighting and insubordination. This crisis posed a threat to the very legitimacy of the young lieutenant’s leadership, and to his conception of honor as well. Its author was none other than Whittle’s fellow commanding officer, James Iredell Waddell.

Waddell had remained a mostly silent but plainly discontented presence since the voyage began. A proud, principled, professional officer of the old school, he could not have welcomed the prospect of sharing command with an officer half his age, especially one who’d come equipped with his own halo, the legacy of the Nashville saga. The overlapping spheres of captain and executive had already generated disputes between the two, and Whittle had prevailed on at least his share of these—including the original disagreement concerning whether Shenandoah should take to the seas with such a drastic dearth of manpower. (Waddell, the staunch traditionalist, had argued strongly against the notion, but went along with it when the vote, proposed by Whittle, was finally taken.)

Since then, Waddell had mostly swallowed his pride; but with each new conflict of command, he’d grown more sullen, less able (or inclined) to mask his disdain for his fellow officer. No sailor could have failed to notice the icy atmosphere between the two men, yet Whittle, by refusing to engage the older captain, had managed to keep a semblance of unity at the command level.

All of that changed on Tuesday, December 13, a violent day of weather on seas that heaved so that the ship’s rudder trembled against its fastenings and the cannon dipped underwater with each precarious roll.

I was very much provoked today by the uncalled for, and unnecessary, interference of the Captain with my duties. I told the Boatswain to fit the Mizzen Topgallant sheets in a particular way, and after it was done, without my knowledge, and though told it was on my order, he had all undone and figured another way. Now he has the power to give any order he chooses and to revoke any order of mine, but he should do it through me. If my orders are to be changed in this way in trifling matters, I may as well take a watch and give him the executive duties, for both of us cannot be Executive Officer. I showed by my manner that I did not like it and I hope he can, and will, profit by it.

Whittle’s observation about duties cut to the heart of the confrontation—at least in organizational terms. Responsibility for rigging the ship lay quite explicitly with the Executive. But the deeper problem lay within James Waddell’s dark, coiled temperament. Whittle’s log reveals that his provocation was hardly a surprise.

I regard him a most unreasonable man in most things. It is a bit of a conceit to suppose that because he is the Commanding Officer he can perform the Executive duties and the duties of all his officers better than they can.

In setting down the reasons why he had not previously risen to Waddell’s goading, Whittle took up an incident of almost fantastical poignancy.

I do not quarrel with him for two reasons, one is that it would injure the service. The other is that when I last walked with his little wife, she begged me to keep out of all quarrels on the cruise.

For Conway Whittle, undercover and under surveillance, even to risk being seen with the wife of a Confederate officer (their “walk” almost certainly occurred while Whittle was still in mufti) was remarkable in itself. For the wife—a Maryland woman of wealth and refinement—to have “begged” Whittle to avoid tangling with Waddell is a testament to the North Carolinian’s capacity for destructive rage.

Whittle’s attempt at quiet diplomacy—to “show by his manner” that he considered Waddell out of line—failed to smother this flickering fire. The following day, as Shenandoah rolled, pitched, and submerged her prow across 194 miles of turbulent seas, Waddell resumed his game of second-guessing the executive officer. He openly questioned Whittle’s concern that the ship’s rudder was working loose under the violent motion against the waves, which thrust it clear out of the water whenever the ship lurched over a crest, only to smash it back down as Shenandoah dove down into the next trough. Whittle believed that the pintles—the fasteners that connected the gigantic piece of teak and metal to the thousand-ton ship’s stern—were losing their purchase on the huge mass of iron and wood. He joined the carpenter and they tried to examine the ship’s stern, despite Waddell’s disdain.

Waddell’s petulant show of power was hideously timed. If ever Shenandoah needed clarifying unity, she needed it now. Ship and crew were unmistakably battling for survival in the thick of a powerful, worsening storm. The wind, Whittle observed, had intensified beyond half-gale force, “and now it is blowing a whole gale like blue lightning.” At one point,

a gigantic wave passed over the vessel and it took a long time for the bow and the stern to come out of the ocean as this immense tonnage of ocean water drained out through whatever scuppers and gun holes it could get through. The noise of the rudder continues, and I cannot form any plan to correct it.

In fact, the raider had now been scooped up by an enormous sub-Atlantic north-Antarctic gale—part of the cyclical storm system that pinwheels continuously around the bottom of the globe. The impact of it was terrifying for the most hardened seaman: swells of ocean foamed up like the sides of mountains and broke across the decks with deafening crashes; stomach-churning tilts sent the fixed cannon underwater again and again. The wind was coming at the ship from directly astern, forcing Whittle to issue a dangerous order: he sent drenched crewmen aloft in their oilskins, picking their way out along the ship’s rigging, groping for toeholds on loops of wet rope, to close-reef the fore main topsail, minimizing the wind’s effect on velocity. Despite the storm the ship as a whole was performing well, “but the rudder makes a good deal of noise and I am anxious about it. We shipped a good deal of water. She is decidedly a wet ship.”

And a divided ship—or would be, if Waddell had anything to say about it, which he did. On Friday, as the storm’s intensity strained the nerves of the crew and the officer staff, and the racket of the great rudder’s trembling rose above the wind, the commanding officer struck again.

Tonight a thing was done by the Captain which seems to me can produce no good, but an immense amount of evil.

The evil deed was done at midnight, appropriately enough. Waddell, from his command post in the wheelhouse, had called for Whittle and some of the midshipmen whom Whittle had assigned to watch shifts. These men included some with substantial credentials. Besides Lieutenant Sydney Smith Lee, the nephew of Robert E. Lee, there was Second Lt. Dabney Marion Scales, who had been an officer aboard the ironclad Lantern, and had served time in the Massachusetts prison camp with Whittle after the Battle of New Orleans. The well-respected Lt. Francis Thornton Chew of Missouri shared an ancestry with the proud Francis Thornton line of Virginia statesmen.

In the pitching, sprawling cacophony of the storm-lashed ship, James Waddell sarcastically questioned the competence of these seamen. Then, as all stood dumbfounded, he ordered two of them dismissed from their posts.

Whittle’s log described the encounter in detail.

The Captain…commenced to talk about what a bad night we were going to have, and remarked that such weather required the best seamanship on deck, and that he would have to be up all the mid watch and all the morning as he did not consider Lieuts. Chew & Scales competent to take care of the ship in such weather. He is a regular self made martyr and thinks that the troubles, privations and evils of no man can be compared to his. I said, no, Captain, if you will keep Mr. Chew’s watch with him I will do the same with Mr. Scales or vice versa. To this he replied, “No, you have enough to do in being on deck the whole day.” I told him I would much prefer keeping one of the watches. He said no, I couldn’t do more, and went below.

Here was a bewildering rebuke to Conway Whittle’s judgment and authority, not to mention a bald humiliation of him in the presence of his men. More provocation soon followed. Having lurched and skidded across the roiling deck to his cabin, Whittle was abruptly summoned back to Waddell, who greeted the lieutenant by identifying the man he wished to replace Francis Chew.

He said, “I want you to send for Mr. Minor and tell him to keep [Chew’s] mid-watch.”

The young lieutenant was incredulous: Minor was but a master’s mate, a noncommissioned sailor. Chew was a first lieutenant, appointed to his post by the president of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis.

I saw at once that it was wrong, ruinously wrong, and said to the Captain that I would infinitely [prefer to] keep the watch myself. His reply was, “No, you have enough to do.”

I urged no more. What more could I urge? I sent for Mr. Minor and gave him the order as coming from the Captain, and then, with the heavy heart of a man who saw evil ahead, started below…

But James Waddell had not finished rubbing it in.

…when the Captain said, “If Mr. Chew is not asleep you can tell him that I relieve him of his watch tonight.”

Whittle had to be the messenger of the orders that preempted his own. As he had in all sorts of fraught moments in his brief naval career, the young lieutenant willed himself to remain under control. He did as he was told. He saved his vitriol for his log, and his response for the right moment, by the right means.

Now if Chew takes of this matter the same view that I do, why, there will be a row of consequence of it. I shall try and keep my skirts clear, but I know that everything like an esprit de corps will be destroyed by such arbitrary and unwarrantable acts of authority.

By Saturday evening the winds had moderated; the sea crests and troughs flattened out. The near-hurricane winds had hurled Shenandoah nearly a thousand miles eastward in four days—243 miles on that day alone. But the weather aboard Shenandoah remained stormy. Now, with the ship under control, the showdown between Waddell and Whittle would commence.

It began by proxy.

Mr. Chew feeling himself most improperly treated, went to the Captain and told him that he could not stand it. Whereupon the Captain told him that he did not consider him competent, and said furthermore that under such circumstances, he would respect neither person, nor commission.

As Whittle feared, Lt. Francis Thornton Chew blew up. He demanded to be relieved of duty altogether and sent home the first time Shenandoah made port. Waddell was only too happy to grant this. Whittle decided to make one last effort to salvage the situation—a decision that brought him face-to-face with his new opponent.

I went on deck and commenced to talk with the Captain and told him that if I were Chew I would not only do what he had done…but that I would report it to the Secretary of the Navy and that I considered that by his act a young man of fine spirit and sense was forced out of the ship.

Waddell feinted out of range. He’d acted only at Chew’s request, he replied disdainfully. Whittle methodically bored in, and suddenly flashed a counterpunch.

My reply to that was that any man of spirit would pursue a similar course…. I asked him what right he had to say that Mr. Chew was not to be trusted with the deck when the wording of Mr. Chew’s commission was identically the same as his own, and besides even if you consider him incompetent, I have volunteered to take the watch with him and your relieving him proves that you have no confidence in me.

Waddell chose again to bob and weave—to toy with the lieutenant. He sneered that Whittle had not volunteered “with the right spirit,” and clearly had not meant what he’d said. The captain allowed that he was disappointed with his fellow officer.

Perhaps Waddell assumed that he could intimidate the younger aide with his condescension, his hulking presence, and his reputation as a duelist. Like so many other adversaries who lightly dismissed the slim young Virginian, Waddell badly underestimated his man.

I was astonished but replied, You, Sir, did not hear me, or else have a very poor memory…. You not only know that I volunteered in the proper spirit, but replied to my desire to keep the watch of Mr. Chew by saying I had enough to do.

Then Whittle landed a flurry:

As to your second charge that I disappointed you, I must say that you have no right to be disappointed…. you furthermore know that besides my duties as Executive Officer, there is not an officer on this vessel who has done as much watching as I have.

At this, Waddell’s demeanor abruptly changed. Instead of lashing back at Whittle, the captain gave vent to a startling cry of the heart—a cry that issued all the way from the tortured chambers of his psyche that he concealed under his brooding aura of menace. Whittle, on whom little was lost, instantly realized that he’d glimpsed this side of Waddell before.

He said, “Well, everyone is opposed to me.” I marked well the remark. He said several days ago that we were all his enemies.

This alertness echoed Whittle’s earlier log entry that Waddell was “a regular self made martyr and thinks that the troubles, privations and evils of no man can be compared to his.” The nerve-shattering stress of the great storm seemed to have awakened some dark demons in Waddell’s soul. The haughty, patronizing veteran of the seas stood revealed as a defenseless paranoid.

In the grip of his self-grievance, Waddell made a serious blunder: he asked Whittle what he wanted. With that query, the captain ceded a great measure of authority, and the power that came with it, to the Virginian. Whittle grasped this at once.

“I said, ‘Sir, I want to advise you to restore Chew to duty. You are going to have an unhappy ship if you do not.’” Waddell was the picture of resigned compliance: “Well, if that is all that Mr. Chew wants, I will agree if he will withdraw his application.”

This mewling offer only consolidated Conway Whittle’s private contempt: “I must say I was very much disgusted at the conversation, but determined to do all I could to bring matters straight.”

Informed of this concession, Francis Chew sensed Waddell’s collapse as acutely as had Whittle: “Chew said he would not withdraw his application unless the Captain promised him the deck, and that he should not be interfered with in the future.” Upon learning of these conditions from Whittle after supper, Waddell retreated further inside his posture of pathos: “Well, Sir, I have no friends in the ship. You are all against me.”

“No friends in the ship”? “You are all against me”? Conway Whittle bristled to full alert at these charges; he grasped their unspoken meaning at once. Waddell was implying mutiny.

No accusation could be more serious, and, if unproven, more reckless. Mutiny was an incendiary concept; its very suspicion—certainly if bruited about by the captain—could throw a ship’s company into chaos. But Waddell’s innuendo scratched against something even more precious to Whittle than stability. It abraded his honor.

What Whittle said in response to this went unrecorded, but it was hot enough to draw a snarling threat from the captain: “Whittle, be careful, you are speaking to me!”

Whittle brushed aside this bluster, and wrested control of the exchange from his Captain: “Sir, I am speaking when there is no such thing as silence. I demand to know what you mean!”

Hours after the event, the lieutenant was still seething—but quietly triumphant.

I can’t write anymore of this extraordinary & plain conversation.

Conway Whittle refused to record the specifics of their exchange in his logbook that evening. The upshot of it, however, was gratifying to him, if painful to behold: Waddell agreed to humble himself by sending for Lieutenant Chew and restoring him to his watch. Then the once-imperious Waddell begged Whittle to forget what had happened—and thus invited the finishing touch to his reduction: “I told him my promise to his little wife, and said I had kept it as long as I could.”

Whittle added in his log:

I trust now there will never be another disturbance…. I go only to preserve the peace of the ship. My aim is that of a friend, but he is so weak as to regard me in the light of an enemy. God knows I want peace for the good for the service.

Soon the sea beneath Shenandoah, now a thousand miles southeast of Cape Town, grew smooth again. The rudder and propeller, both having survived the storm without further apparent damage, were holding. A sprightly wind coursing down out of the Mozambique Channel ushered the raider 150 miles on Sunday, December 18. Whittle ordered the fore and main topgallants reset, the decks holystoned. Ship’s carpenter O’Shea set to work building a permanent magazine to keep the gunpowder dry.

“I am getting heartily tired of not catching another Yankee,” Whittle recorded three days later. “This is too much sailing without a prize.” Yet his words sounded almost jaunty this time: the words of an executive officer, tested in crises of nature and human nature—triumphant, assured, and in control.