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- [00:04]
Host
The Merry Beggars at Relevant radio present episode 17 Christmas Abroad.
- [00:29]
Narrator
By this time it was getting dark and snowing pretty heavily. And as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms was wonderful. Here the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cozy dinner with hot plates baking through and through before the fire and deep red curtains ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company and piling up its fires half chimney high blessings on it. How the ghost exalted. How it bared its breadth of breast and opened its capacious palm and floated on outpouring with a generous hand its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach. And now, without a word of warning from the ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stones were cast about as though it were the burial place of giants, and water spread itself wheresoever it listed or would have done so but for the frost that held it prisoner. And nothing grew but moss and furze and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red which glared upon the desolation for an instant like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower, yet was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.
- [02:12]
Scrooge
What place is this?
- [02:13]
Spirit
A place where miners live who labor in the bowels of the earth. But they know me. See that light?
- [02:23]
Narrator
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it, passing through the wall of mud and stone. They found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman with their children and their children's children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
- [02:43]
Chorus
All three ships come sailing in on Christmas day On Christmas day I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas die in the morning. And what was in those ships, all three? On Christmas day, on Christmas?
- [02:59]
Narrator
The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song. It had been a very old song when he was a boy, and from time to time they all joined in the chorus, so surely as they raised their voices, the old man Got quite blithe and loud. And so surely as they stopped, his vigor sank again.
- [03:21]
Spirit
Onward. Hold my robe.
- [03:27]
Narrator
Scrooge, holding the spirit's robe, found himself passing on above the moor sped whither not to sea. To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks behind them. And his ears were deafened by the thundering of water as it rolled and roared and raged among the dreadful caverns. It had worn and fiercely tried to undermine the earth, built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and stormbirds born of the wind one might suppose, the seaweed of the water rose and fell about it like the waves. They skimmed. Scrooge and the spirit passed through the lighthouse's wave beaten walls and found two men. The two men who watched the light. The fire that threw the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea.
- [04:30]
Scrooge
Merry Christmas, Harry. Merry Christmas. Hark how all the welkin rings. Glory to the King of kings. Peace on earth and mercy mild God in sinners reconciled Joyful all ye nations Rise, join the triumph of the skies Universal nature say Christ the Lord is born today.
- [05:04]
Spirit
Onward.
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Narrator
Again the ghosts sped on above the black and heaving sea. On, on. Until being far away from any shore, they lighted on a ship ahoy.
- [05:20]
Scrooge
Pull in the ropes, sir.
- [05:21]
Host
Aye, aye, pull them in.
- [05:25]
Narrator
They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the lookout in the bow, the officers who had the watch, dark ghostly figures in their several stations. But every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companions of some bygone Christmas Day with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year, and had shared to some extent in its festivities, and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.
- [06:02]
Scrooge
Pull them in and we'll see Christmas at home.
- [06:06]
Narrator
Yet it was a great surprise to Scrooge. While listening to the moaning of the wind, the calls of the seamen, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss whose depths were secrets as profound as death, it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh.
- [06:36]
Host
Subscribe at advent with scrooge.com for the next episode of A Christmas Carol and download a free companion guide with activities, questions and coloring pages. Subscribe for free at adventwithscrooge. Com Advent with scrooge dot com.