by violence, she determined to give a new
occasion[270] to her death.[271] Accordingly, she issued secretly
forth of her father's house one night and betaking herself to the
harbour, happened upon a fishing smack, a little aloof from the other
ships, which, for that its owners had but then landed therefrom, she
found furnished with mast and sail and oars. In this she hastily
embarked and rowed herself out to sea; then, being somewhat skilled in
the mariner's art, as the women of that island mostly are, she made
sail and casting the oars and rudder adrift, committed herself
altogether to the mercy of the waves, conceiving that it must needs
happen that the wind would either overturn a boat without lading or
steersman or drive it upon some rock and break it up, whereby she
could not, even if she would, escape, but must of necessity be
drowned. Accordingly, wrapping her head in a mantle, she laid herself,
weeping, in the bottom of the boat.

[Footnote 270: Lit. necessity (_necessita_).]

[Footnote 271: _i.e._ to use a new (or strange) fashion of exposing
herself to an inevitable death (_nuova necessita dare alla sua
morte_).]

But it befell altogether otherwise than as she conceived, for that,
the wind being northerly and very light and there being well nigh no
sea, the boat rode it out in safety and brought her on the morrow,
about vespers, to a beach near a town called Susa, a good hundred
miles beyond Tunis. The girl, who, for aught that might happen, had
never lifted nor meant to lift her head, felt nothing of being ashore
more than at sea;[272] but, as chance would have it, there was on the
beach, whenas the bark struck upon it, a poor woman in act to take up
from the sun the nets of the fishermen her masters, who, seeing the
bark, marvelled how it should be left to strike full sail upon the
land. Thinking that the fishermen aboard were asleep, she went up to
the bark and seeing none therein but the damsel aforesaid, who slept
fast, called her many times and having at last aroused her and knowing
her by her habit for a Christian, asked her in Latin how she came
there in that bark all alone. The girl, hearing her speak Latin,
misdoubted her a shift of wind must have driven her back to Lipari and
starting suddenly to her feet, looked about her, but knew not the
country, and seeing herself on land, asked the good woman where she
was; to which she answered, 'Daughter mine, thou art near unto Susa in
Barbary.' The gir