When tall masts rocked above, and voices hailed, and a rope shot across, again the Adventurer pressed Christian hard with precious human kindness. Men big and fair-haired were shouting, knocking at his heart strangely. Most foolish and absurd came a longing just once before he died to be warm and dry again, just once. He shook his head.
Philip kept off, nor by word or sign offered the forgiveness he ached after, but hasted to pass first. Then the other followed; he loosed the rope; it leapt away. The last face he saw gleaming above him was Philip's, with its enmity and a ghastly drawn smile of relief: never to be seen of him again.
How long would her vengeance delay? The vast anger of the sea leaped and roared round him, snatching, striking. An hour passed, and he was still afloat, though the mast was gone; and near another, and he was still afloat, but by clinging to an upward keel. In cruel extremity, then, he cried the name of Diadyomene, with a prayer for merciful despatch, and again her name, and again.
Diadyomene heard. The waves ran ridged with light that flickered and leaped like dim white flame. Phosphor fires edged the keel; a trailing rope was revealed as a luminous streak. He got it round his body, and his hands were eased.
Up from below surged a dark, snaky coil, streaming with pale flakes of fire; it looped him horribly; a second length and a third flung over him; a fourth overhung, feeling in air. A loathsome knot worked upon the planks, spread, and rooted there. He plucked an arm free, and his neck was circled instead. His knife he had not: barehanded he fought, frenzied by loathing of the foul monster, the foulest the sea breeds.
Before his eyes rose the sea's fairest, towered above him on the rush of a wave, sank to his level. Terrible was her face of anger, and cruel, for she smiled. She flung out a gesture of condemnation and scorn, that flashed flakes of light off shoulder and hair. She called him 'traitor,' and bade him die; and he, frantic, tore away the throttled coil at his throat, and got out, 'Forgive.'
Like challenge and defiance she hurled then her offer of mercy: 'Stretch, then, your hand to me—on my lips and my breast swear, give up your soul: then I forgive.'
She heard the death agony of a man cried then. Ceasing to struggle, his throat was enwound again; both arms were fast: he cried to his God to resume his soul, and to take it straight out of his body and out of hell.
Away she turned with teeth clenched and furious eyes; then, writhing, she returned, reached out, with one finger touched, and the foul creature shrank, relaxed, drew coil by coil away, dropped, and was gone. Diadyomene flashed away.
When the night and the trouble of the storm were past, not a ship afloat was scatheless. From one that crawled disabled, a boat was spied, drifting keel upward, with the body of a man hanging across it, whose bright hair shone in the early sun, making a swarter race wonder. Against all conjecture life proved to be in him yet. And what unimaginable death had been at him? What garland was this on his throat: blossoms of blood under the skin? When he was recovered to speech he would not say. Good christian men, what could they think? His boat was righted, and with scant charity he was hustled back into it; none of these, suddenly eager to be quit of him, wishing him God-speed.