with a prosperous gale; the rowers in the boats tugged at their oars with all their might. Suddenly another terrific storm arose, and after battling with the waves in vain, the violence of the tempest mocking all their efforts, they all disappeared from my sight.
And yet not quite all. One very small skiff survived, in which there was only one person, and that person was a beautiful girl. She rowed her tiny boat with graceful ease, and mounted on the billows like a fearless and majestic swan. Her golden hair clustered in rich masses around her pearly shoulders. Her watchful eyes glanced quickly from side to side like twin stars. She was clothed in garments of the purest white, but wore no covering on her head. Her boat touched the shore, and in a soft, bewitching voice she addressed me:
'Dost thou wish to leave this island?
'I do, madam,' I replied; 'I am hungry and thirsty, and can find nothing to eat or drink.'
'Come with me then,' she said, 'and do not touch its riches!'
I entered her little boat in a transport of delight, and she rowed hastily away from the shore. Never in my life had I seen such a transcendently lovely creature. Her beauty cannot be described in words. While her tiny bark flew over the now calm water, I could see the remains of the lost fleet, and the bodies of the unfortunate sailors, lying beneath the surface. My fair fellow-passenger did not utter another word, but on my offering to take the oars she bent her head, intimating that I should sit still. She looked at me sometimes with, I thought, a pitying gaze; at other times, after a hurried glance, she betrayed by a celestial smile an inward consciousness of the sweetest and purest joy. We now approached another island, or continent, very different indeed from that golden shore of destruction which
