to strew
with dead men and broken timber the angry, surf-beaten shore.

"My King," she sighed to herself. "My King! my Own!" And through the
weary hours she prayed to the gods to bring him safely back to her,
and many times she offered fragrant incense to Juno, protectress of
women, that she might have pity on a woman whose husband and true
lover was out in the storm, a plaything for ruthless winds and waves.

A helpless plaything was the king of Thessaly. Long ere the dim
evening light had made of the shore of his own land a faint, grey
line, the white-maned horses of Poseidon, king of the seas, began to
rear their heads, and as night fell, a black curtain, blotting out
every landmark, and all home-like things, the East Wind rushed across
the AEgean Sea, smiting the sea-horses into madness, seizing the sails
with cruel grasp and casting them in tatters before it, snapping the
mast as though it were but a dry reed by the river. Before so mighty a
tempest no oars could be of any avail, and for a little time only the
winds and waves gambolled like a half-sated wolf-pack over their
helpless prey. With hungry roar the great weight of black water stove
in the deck and swept the sailors out of the ship to choke them in its
icy depths; and ever it would lift the wounded thing high up on its
foaming white crests, as though to toss it to the dark sky, and ever
again would suck it down into the blackness, while the shrieking winds
drove it onward with howling taunts and mocking laughter. While life
stayed in him, Ceyx thought only of Halcyone. He had no fear, only
the fear of the grief his death must bring to her who loved him as he
loved her, his peerless queen, his Halcyone. His prayers to the gods
were prayers for her. For himself he asked one thing only--that the
waves might bear his body to her sight, so that her gentle hands might
lay him in his tomb. With shout of triumph that they had slain a king,
winds and waves seized him even as he prayed, and the Day Star that
was hidden behind the black pall of the sky knew that his son, a brave
king and a faithful lover, had gone down to the Shades.

When Dawn, the rosy-fingered, had come to Thessaly, Halcyone,
white-faced and tired-eyed, anxiously watched the sea, that still was
tossing in half-savage mood. Eagerly she gazed at the place where last
the white sail had been seen. Was it not possible that Ceyx, having
weathered the gale, might for the present have foregone his voy