Enter Ariel.
Ari. All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl’d clouds: to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.[379-55]
Pros. Hast thou, spirit,
Perform’d to point[379-56] the tempest that I bade thee?
Ari. To every article.
I boarded the King’s ship; now on the beak,[379-57]
Now in the waist,[380-58] the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement: sometime I’d divide,
And burn in many places; on the top-mast,
The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,[380-59]
Then meet and join. Jove’s lightnings, the precursors
O’ the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary[380-60]
And sight-outrunning were not: the fire, and cracks
Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune
Seem’d to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble.
Yea, his dread trident shake.
Pros. My brave spirit!
Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil[380-61]
Would not infect his reason?
Ari. Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad,[380-62] and play’d
Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners
Plunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel.
Then all a-fire with me: The King’s son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring,[380-63]—then like reeds, not hair,—
Was the first man that leap’d; cried, Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.
Pros. Why, that’s my spirit!
But was not this nigh shore?
Ari. Close by, my master.
Pros. But are they, Ariel, safe?
Ari. Not a hair perish’d;
On their unstaining[381-64] garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and, as thou badest me,
In troops I have dispersed them ’bout the isle.
The King’s son have I landed by himself;
Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs
In an odd angle[381-65] of the isle, and sitting,
His arms in this sad knot.[381-66]