But there came a dreadful thundering of the cliff, and fragments of rock fell about us like hail. Lifting me bodily into the boat, Thalass launched her forth, running out through the breakers, and giving her at the last a mighty impulse. I beheld for a moment his stern, hard-favoured face shining like bronze in the livid light—and saw it no more for ever!
Tossed in the turmoil of the boiling sea, the boat blundered out beyond the breakers, vaulting nimbly over the surges. I clutched her sides, seared and scalded and near stifled with the smoke and fiery spume and dust that blew whirling down upon me from the erupting and burning island. A giddiness came over me. I fought against it hard, with shut eyes, bringing the whole force of my will on the resolve to endure and live.
There came the sound of singing.
The roar of the holocaust in the woods was abated, the wind coming about from the sea; the cliffs, for a space, had ceased to thunder; and, faint and small, but clear and serene and bewitching sweet, there sounded that phantom voice singing.
Struck out of myself with amazement, I forgot all my peril as I listened.
And thus it was:
Stay not in the land of sighing,
Stay not in the vale of tears;
Where the phantom of the years
Haunts the weary and the dying: