ung
doggedly to the helm.

Thus half that day the wind flung us forward, till presently, far on the
horizon, we could discern the sullen outline of a cliff.

"We are lost!" said I.

"Humphrey, you are a fool," said Ludar. "See you not the wind is
backing fast?"

So it was, and as we drove on, ever nearer the fatal coast, it swung
round again to the southerly, and the sun above us blazed out fitfully
from among the breaking clouds.

"Heaven fights for us," said Ludar. "Quick, rig up a sail forward and
fly a yard; and do you, seaman, look to your charts and say where we
are."

"That I have done long since," said the sailor. "We are scarce a league
from the Holy Island, and 'tis full time we put her head out, sir."

"Come and take the helm then."

For a while it seemed as if we were to expect as wild a tempest from the
south as ever we had met from the east. But towards evening, the wind
slackened a bit, and, veering south-east, enabled us to stand clear of
the coast, and make, battered and ill canvassed as we were, straight for
the Scotch Forth.

The maiden slept all through that night, and when at dawn she came on
deck, fresh and singing, we were tumbling merrily through a slackening
sea, with the Bass Rock looming on the horizon.

"Methinks the jaded Greek felt not otherwise when, leaving behind him
the blood-stained plains of Troy, he espied the cloud-topped mountains
of Hellas," said the poet, who joined us as we stood.

"Which means," said the maiden, "you are glad?"

"Shall Pyramus rejoice to see the wall that hides him from his Thisbe?
or Hector leap at the trumpet which parts him from his Andromache?
Mistress mine, in yonder rock shall I read my doom?"

"Rather read us your ode, Sir Poet," said she. "It has had a stormy
hatching, and should be a tempestuous outburst."

"As indeed you shall find it, if I have your leave to rehearse it," said
he.

"I beg no greater favour," said she.

Then the poet poured out this brave sonnet:--

"Go, grievous gales, your heads that heave,
Ye foam-flaked furies of the wasty deep.
Ye loud-tongued Tritons, wind and wave.
Go fan my love where she doth sleep,
And tell her, tell her in her ear
Her Corydon sits sighing here.

"The tempest stalks the stormy sea,
The lightning leaps with lurid light,
The glad gull calls from lea to lea,
The whistling whirlwind fills the night;
Bears each a message to my love,
Whose stony heart I fai