a disconsolate neck at the waterside as if in
search of the Lorelei.

When, as it seemed to me, it must be nearing dawn, though how the
hours flitted so swiftly passed my comprehension, I very cautiously
climbed out of my narrow window and descended slowly to the lawns
beneath. My foot had scarcely touched ground when ringing and menacing
from some dark gallery of the palace above me broke out a distant
baying.

Nothing shall persuade me to tell how fast I ran; how feverishly I
haled poor Rosinante out of sleep, and pushed her down into the deeps
of that coal-black stream; with what agility I clambered into the
saddle.

Yet I could not help commiserating the while the faithful soul who
floated beneath me. The stream was swift but noiseless, the water
rather rare than cold, yet, despite all the philosophy beaming out of
her maidenly eyes across the smooth surface of the tide, Rosinante
must have preferred from the bottom of her heart dry land.

I, too, momentarily, when I discovered that we were speedily
approaching the roaring fall whose reverberations I had heard long
since.

Out of the emerald twilight we floated from beneath the overarching
thickets. Pale beams were striking from the risen sun upon the gliding
surface, and dwelt in splendour where danger sat charioted beneath a
palely gorgeous bow. Yet I doubt if ever mortal man swept on to defeat
at last so rapturously as I.

The gloomier trees had now withdrawn from the banks of the river. A
pale morning sky over-canopied the shimmering forests. Here rose the
solitary tower where Echo tarried for the Hornblower. And straight
before us, across that level floor, beyond a tremulous cloud of foam
and light and colour, lurked the unseen, the unimaginable, the
ever-dreamed-of, Death.

Heedless of Lorelei, heedless of all save the beauty and terror and
glory in which they rode, down swept snorting ship and master to doom.

The crystal water jargoned past my saddle. Sky, earth, and tower, like
the panorama of a dream, wheeled around me. Light blinded me; clamour
deafened me; foam and the pure wave and cold darkness whelmed over me.
We surged, paused, gazed, nodded, crashed:--and so an end to Ennui.

VII

_He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree._

--SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

How long my body was the sport of that foaming water I cannot tell.
But when I again opened my eyes, I found, first, that the sun was
shining