rm gathered over the western
waters; and as night drew on the sky, black with serried ranks of clouds,
burst into sharp jets of fire, the rain poured forth in torrents
unquenchable, and the shriek of a mighty whirlwind, mingling with the deep
echoes of Indra's thunder, drowned even the roar of the storm-lashed seas.
Among the ships abroad on that night was one of strange device with high
peaked prow, manned by a crew of fair-skinned and blue-eyed men, which was
forging its way from a northern port to some fair city of Southern India;
and when the storm struck her, she was not many miles from what we now call
the Ratnagiri coast. Bravely did she battle with the tempest; bravely did
her men essay to keep her on her course, bringing to play their hereditary
knowledge of sea-craft, their innate dexterity of brain. But all their
scheming, all their courage proved fruitless. As a bridegroom of old time
scattering the bridal procession by the might of a powerful right arm, the
sea swept away her protectors and carried her, lone and defenceless, on to
the surge-beaten shore. And when morning broke Surya, rising red above the
eastern hills, watched the hungry waves cast up beside her fourteen white
corpses, the remnants of her crew--silent suppliants for the last great
rites which open to man the passage into the next world.

Now at the ebb of the tide the dark people that dwelt upon the marge of the
sea fared shorewards and found the blue-eyed mariners lying dead beside
their vessel; and they, marvelling greatly what manner of men these might
have been, took counsel among themselves and decided to bestow upon them
the last rites of the dead. So they built a mighty funeral pyre for them
with logs of resinous wood hewn in the dark forest that stretched inland,
and they fortified the souls of the dead seamen with prayer and
lamentation. But lo! a miracle: for as the flames hissed upwards,
purging the bodies of all earthly taint, life returned to them by the grace
of Parashurama; and they rose one and all from the pyre and praised Him of
the Axe, in that he had raised them from the dead and made them truly
"Chitta-Pavana" or the "Pyre Purified." And they dwelt henceforth in the
land of the arrow of their Deliverer and were at peace, forgetting their
former home and their drear wandering over the pathless sea, and taking
perchance unto themselves wives from among the ancient holders of the soil.
Now the place where they abode is calle