s do you doom me? Alas! then finish your
work! Deliver me a prey to some ferocious beast, or by whatever fate
you choose bring me to an end. I will be thankful to you for
terminating my life and my misery." At last, exhausted by her sorrows,
she fell asleep, and sunk prostrate on the sand.

Before recounting what next befell, we must declare what place it was
upon which the unhappy lady was now thrown. In the sea that washes the
coast of Ireland there is an island called Ebuda, whose inhabitants,
once numerous, had been wasted by the anger of Proteus till there were
now but few left. This deity was incensed by some neglect of the usual
honors which he had in old times received from the inhabitants of the
land, and, to execute his vengeance, had sent a horrid sea-monster,
called an Orc, to devour them. Such were the terrors of his ravages
that the whole people of the isle had shut themselves up in the
principal town, and relied on their walls alone to protect them. In
this distress they applied to the Oracle for advice, and were directed
to appease the wrath of the sea-monster by offering to him the fairest
virgin that the country could produce.

Now it so happened that the very day when this dreadful oracle was
announced, and when the fatal mandate had gone forth to seek among the
fairest maidens of the land one to be offered to the monster, some
sailors, landing on the beach where Angelica was, beheld that beauty as
she lay asleep.

O blind Chance! whose power in human affairs is but too great, canst
thou then abandon to the teeth of a horrible monster those charms which
different sovereigns took arms against one another to possess? Alas!
the lovely Angelica is destined to be the victim of those cruel
islanders.

Still asleep, she was bound by the Ebudians, and it was not until she
was carried on board the vessel that she came to a knowledge of her
situation. The wind filled the sails and wafted the ship swiftly to the
port, where all that beheld her agreed that she was unquestionably the
victim selected by Proteus himself to be his prey. Who can tell the
screams, the mortal anguish of this unhappy maiden, the reproaches she
addressed even to the heavens themselves, when the dreadful information
of her cruel fate was made known to her? I cannot; let me rather turn
to a happier part of my story.

Rogero left the palace of Logestilla, careering on his flying courser
far above the tops of the mountains, and borne we