cers, horribly afraid of the devil-haunted beach of
noises, with their heads full of the fumes of broacht liquor. One
castaway was found hiding under the ribs of a dead whale which smelt
abominably. They hauled him out by the legs--he mistook them for
imps--and gave him drink. And now, discipline being melted, they would
strike out for themselves, defy their officers, and take possession of
the island. The narrator's mates in this enterprise were probably
described as fools. He was the only sober man in the company.

So they went inland, faring badly as they staggered up and down this
pestilent country. They were prickt with palmettoes, and the cedar
branches raspt their faces. Then they found and stole some of their
officers' clothes which were hanging up to dry. But presently they fell
into a swamp, and, what was worse, into the hands of their officers; and
the great expedition ended in muck and mire. Truly an island bewicht.
Else why their cramps and sickness? Sack never made a man more than
reasonably drunk. He was prepared to answer for unlimited sack; but
what befell his stomach and head was the purest magic that honest man
ever met.

A drunken sailor of to-day wandering about Bermuda would probably
sympathize with him; and to-day, as then, if one takes the easiest
inland road from Trinculo's beach, near Hamilton, the path that a
drunken man would infallibly follow, it ends abruptly in swamp. The one
point that our mariner did not dwell upon was that he and the others
were suffering from acute alcoholism combined with the effects of
nerve-shattering peril and exposure. Hence the magic. That a wizard
should control such an island was demanded by the beliefs of all
seafarers of that date.

Accept this theory, and you will concede that the 'Tempest' came to the
manager sanely and normally in the course of his daily life. He may have
been casting about for a new play; he may have purposed to vamp an old
one--say, 'Aurelio and Isabella'; or he may have been merely waiting on
his demon. But it is all Prospero's wealth against Caliban's pignuts
that to him in a receptive hour, sent by heaven, entered the original
Stephano fresh from the seas and half-seas over. To him Stephano told
his tale all in one piece, a two hours' discourse of most glorious
absurdities. His profligate abundance of detail at the beginning, when
he was more or less sober, supplied and surely establisht the
earth-basis of the play in accordance wi