w no more than
they knew of Palinuro. Far enough, indeed, were we from their parish.
The old man at last laid down the bit of brass which he had saved from
some old waif, and listened to me as I pointed out to them on my map the
course we were making, and, without answering me a word, fell on his
knees and broke into most voluble prayer,--only interrupted by sobs of
undisguised agony. The boys were almost as much surprised as I was. And
as he prayed and sobbed, the boat rushed on!

Santa Madre, San Giovanni, and Sant' Antonio,--we needed all their help,
if it were only to keep him quiet; and when at last he rose from his
knees, and came to himself enough to tend the sheets a little, I asked,
as modestly as I could, what put this keen edge on his grief or his
devotions. Then came such stories of hobgoblins, witches, devils,
giants, elves, and fairies, at this head of the bay!--no man ever
returned who landed there; his father and his father's father had
charged him, and his brothers and his cousins, never to be lured to
make a voyage there, and never to run for those coves, though schools of
golden fish should lead the way. It was not till this moment, that,
trying to make him look upon the map, I read myself there the words, at
the mouth of the Crathis River, "Sybaris Ruine."

Surely enough, this howling Euroclydon--for Euroclydon it now was--was
bearing me and mine directly to Sybaris!

And here was this devout old fisherman confirming the words of Smith's
Dictionary, when it said that nobody had been there and returned, for
generation upon generation.

At a dozen knots an hour, as things were, I was going to Sybaris! Nor
was I many hours from it. For at that moment we cannot have been more
than five-and-thirty miles from the beach, where, in less than four
hours, Euroclydon flung us on shore.

The memory of the old green settees, and of Hutchinson and Wheeler and
the other Latin-school boys, sustained me beneath the calamity which
impended. Nor do I think at heart the boys felt so bad as their father
about the djins and the devils, the powers of the earth and the powers
of the air. Is there, perhaps, in the youthful mind, rather a passion
for "seeing the folly" of life a little in that direction? None the less
did we join him in rigging out the longest sweep we had aft, lashing it
tight under the little rail which we had been leaning on, and trying
gentle experiments, how far this extemporized rudder might bring