lphins as they leapt into the sunshine and sank again
amidst the gleaming spray.

There was abundant vegetation upon the island, but it does not appear to
have looked quite real. The fig-trees were heavy with fruit, the vines
were festooned from bough to bough, hung with clusters of grapes, and
pomegranates were ripe for the plucking. But there seems to have been an
unearthliness about them, as though a deep enchantment were upon them.
In the tangled undergrowth through which the bewildered sailor walked
there lay great melons and pumpkins. The breeze wafted to his nostrils
the smell of the incense-trees; and the scent of the flowers, after the
storm, must have made every breath he breathed a pleasure of Paradise to
him. Moving over the luxuriant ground, he put up flights of wonderful
birds which sped towards the interior, red, green, and golden, against
the sky. Monkeys chattered at him from the trees, and sprang from
branch to branch amidst the dancing flowers. In shadowed pools of clear
water fishes were to be seen, gliding amidst the reeds; and amongst the
rocks beside the sea the castaway could look down upon the creatures of
the deep imprisoned between the tides.

Food in all forms was to hand, and he had but to fill his arms with the
good things which Fate had provided. "I found there," he said, "figs,
grapes, and all manner of goodly onions; melons and pomegranates were
there, and pumpkins of every kind. Fishes were there and fowls: there
was nought that was lacking in it. I satisfied myself, and set upon the
ground the abundance of that with which my arms were filled. I took the
fire-borer and kindled a fire, and made a burnt-offering to the gods."

Seated in the warm sunshine amidst the trees, eating a roast fowl
seasoned with onions or some equally palatable concoction, he seems to
have found the life of a shipwrecked mariner by no means as distressing
as he had anticipated; and the wording of the narrative appears to be so
arranged that an impression of comfortable ease and security may
surround his sunlit figure. Suddenly, however, all was changed. "I
heard," said he, "a sound as of thunder, and I thought it was the waves
of the sea." Then "the trees creaked and the earth trembled"; and, like
the Egyptian that he was, he went down on his shaking hands and knees,
and buried his face in the ground.

At length "I uncovered my face," he declared, "and I found it was a
serpent that came, of the length of thir