“Too late, too late,” I thought, and bitterly reflected that, had the vessel appeared but an hour earlier, the attention of my cruel captors might have been diverted to such a spectacle as they had never seen before.
But it was not too late.
Perched on a little hillock, and straining his gaze to the south, the old priest was speaking loudly and excitedly. The crowd deserted us, and gathered about him.
I threw myself on the sand, weary, hopeless, parched with thirst, and racked with pain. Bludger was already lying in a crumpled mass at my feet. I think he had fainted.
I retained consciousness, but that was all. The fierceness of the sun beat upon me, the sky and sea and shore swam before me in a mist. Presently I heard the voice of the priest, raised in the cadences which he favoured when he was reading texts out of their sacred books, if books they could be called. I looked at him with a faint curiosity, and perceived that he held in his hands the wooden casket, adorned with strangely carved bands of gold and ivory, which I had seen on the night of my arrival on the island.
From this he had selected the old grey scraps of metal, scratched, as I was well aware, with what they conceived to be ancient prophecies.
I was now sufficiently acquainted with the language to understand the verses which he was chanting, and which I had already heard, without comprehending them. They ran thus in English:
“But when a man, having a chimney pot on his head, and four eyes, appears in Scheria, and when a ship without sails also comes, sailing without wind, and breathing smoke, then shall destruction fall on the island.”
He had not ended when it was plain, even to those ignorant people, that the prophecy was about to be fulfilled. From the long, narrow, black line of the steamer, which had approached us with astonishing speed, “sailing without wind, and breathing smoke,” there burst six flashes of fire, followed by a peal like thunder, and six tall fountains, as the natives fancied, of sea-water rose and fell in the bay, where the shells had lighted.
It was plain that the commander of the vessel, finding himself in unknown seas, and hard by an unvisited country, was determined to strike terror and command respect by this salute.