l; and all their care was
to flee together and lose all the world for love. But they never
reached France; for having run prosperously down Channel and across
from the Land's End until they sighted Ushant, they met a
north-easterly gale which blew them off the coast; a gale so blind
and terrible and persistent that for twelve days they ran before it,
in peril of death. On the thirteenth day they sighted an island,
where, having found (as they thought) good anchorage, they brought
the ship to, and rowed the lady ashore through the surf.
Between suffering and terror she was already close upon death.

"Now this man Prince said that 'though the seamen laid their peril at
her door, holding the monstrous storm to be a judgment direct from
Heaven upon her sin, yet not one of them, considering her childish
beauty, had the heart to throw her an ill word or so much as an
accusing look: but having borne her ashore they built a tabernacle of
boughs and roofed it with a spare sail for her and for her lover, who
watched beside her till she died.

"On the morning of her death the seamen, who slept on the beach at a
little distance, were awakened by a terrible cry: whereat, gazing
seaward--as a seaman's first impulse is--they missed all sight of
their ship. Either the gale, reviving, had parted her moorings and
blown her out to sea, or else the two or three left on board her
treacherously slipped her cable. At all events, no more was ever
heard of her.

"The seamen supposed then that Master Machin had called out for the
loss of the ship. But coming to him they found him staring at the
poor corpse of his lady; and when they pointed to sea he appeared to
mark not their meaning. Only he said many times, 'Is she gone?
Is she gone?' Whether he spoke of the ship or of the lady they could
not tell. Thereafter he said nothing, but turned his face away from
all offers of food, and on the fifth day the seaman buried him beside
his mistress and set up a wooden cross at their heads.

"After this (said Prince), finding no trace of habitation on the
island, and being convinced that no ship ever passed within sight of
it, the seamen caught and killed four of the sheep which ran wild
upon the cliffs, and with the flesh of them provisioned the boat in
which they had come ashore, and took their leave. For eleven days
they steered as nearly due east as they could--that being the quarter
in which they supposed the mainland to lie, until a ga