ul thoughts and blind!
The ship escaped from wreck, where hope was none;
When master and when men their charge resigned,
And let the vessel without guidance run.
It would appear the wind has changed its mind,
On seeing all that sailed in her are gone;
And blows the vessel from those shallows free,
Through better course, into a safer sea.

XXIV
She, having drifted wildly with her guide,
Without him, made directly Africk's strand,
Two or three miles of waste Biserta wide,
Upon the quarter facing Egypt's land;
And, as the sea went down and the wind died,
Stood bedded in that weary waste of sand.
Now thither Roland roved, who paced the shore;
As I in other strain rehearsed before;

XXV
And willing to discover if alone,
Laden, or light, the stranded vessel were,
He, Olivier, and Monodantes' son,
Aboard her in a shallow bark repair:
Beneath the hatchways they descend, but none
Of human kind they see; and only there
Find good Frontino, with the trenchant sword
And gallant armour of his youthful lord;

XXVI
Who was so hurried in his hasty flight
He had not even time to take his sword;
To Orlando known; which, Balisardo hight,
Was his erewhile; the tale's upon record,
And ye have read it all, as well I wite;
How Falerina lost it to that lord,
When waste as well her beauteous bowers he laid;
And how from him Brunello stole the blade;

XXVII
And how beneath Carena, on the plain
Brunello on Rogero this bestowed.
How matchless was that faulchion's edge and grain,
To him experience had already showed;
I say, Orlando; who was therefore fain,
And to heaven's king with grateful thanks o'erflowed;
And deemed, and often afterwards so said,
Heaven for such pressing need had sent the blade:

XXVIII
Such pressing need, in that he had to fight
With the redoubted king of Sericane;
And knew that he, besides his fearful might,
Was lord of Bayard and of Durindane.
Not knowing them, Anglantes' valiant knight
So highly rated not the plate and chain
As he that these had proved: they valour were,
But valued less as good than rich and fair;

XXIX
And, for of harness he had little need,
Charmed, and against all weapons fortified,
To Olivier he left the warlike weed:
Not so the sword; which to his waist he tied:
To Brandimart Orlando gave the steed:
Thus equally that spoil would he divide
With his companion