“Come,” whispered Colubra, growing pale. But Ovid stood as though spell-bound. Charon raised his pole again and smote it against the trees with a sound like thunder. Then, behold, all the forms that moved upon the island pressed toward the ship and held out imploring hands. But Charon asked in deep, dread tones: “Who hath spoken the truth these thousand years?”
“I!—I!” came the answer from every side: but all who spoke the word were instantly changed into serpents.
“I,” cried a wondrously beautiful woman, forcing her way through the mass of writhing reptiles, her white veil shining as it floated in the twilight air—“I have kept silence for a thousand years, that I might rejoin my seven children in the Elysian fields. I will go to my children!” And with this cry she sped over the sand into the ship.
“I,” said Colubra quite low.
“Thou?” asked Ovid sadly. “Then must I lose thee?”
Colubra looked at the poet and then at the ship.
“If I could but remain a maiden, I would love thee only, and belong to no other.”
“O Colubra, thou liest! Keep silence!”
But he had scarcely spoken the words ere she was changed into the same little snake as of old.
Now the keel grated on the sand once again and Charon pushed off from the shore. And lo! the trees came crashing down, the flowers turned to dust, and the grass withered; while far, far away Charon’s white beard and the woman’s waving white veil shone out in the moonlight. But upon the sandy shore and among the stunted, thorny bushes only the smooth, gleaming serpent-forms crawled and writhed. Then horror fell upon Ovid, and he hastened towards his own boat. With the cry of “Serpents!” he awakened the sleeping men, who rubbed their eyes, muttering discontentedly, “For this we came hither, then—to see serpents!” “Away now, away!” cried Ovid, who, for the horror that was upon him, had well-nigh forgotten his little friend. But as they were pushing off he remembered her, and called aloud: “Colubra! my faithful little Colubra!” Then a faint, very faint sound of laughter smote his ear, and something wound itself caressingly about his neck, and two eyes gazed steadily up into his in the clear moonlight. The sailors thought their master had taken leave of his wits, for he spoke no more, save to murmur from time to time, “A thousand years!—and for me!” while he stroked something which shone round his throat, and which they took to be a jewel.