“By God and his Prophet, these Franks are great fool about women,” observed the pacha to Mustapha. “I must own, though, that I like this princess better than Cerise, and I am very sorry that she is dead. Come, Huckaback, go on. Where did you throw yourself?”
On her body (continued the renegade, mournfully), where I remained for many hours. At last I rose in a frenzy quite indifferent as to life or death. I went on deck, where I found my crew much in the same condition, from their agonising thirst; but I mocked them, and laughed at the smooth expanse of water, which, far as the eye could reach, was not rippled by the slightest breeze, and turned my eyes up in derision to the sun, who poured down his vertical streams of light and heat, as if he would consume us with his powerful rays. I thought but of one subject, I had but one desire, which was, to rejoin the object of my adoration. On a sudden I called to mind the flasks of golden water, which till then I had forgotten, and rushing down into the cabin, I determined to intoxicate myself, and quit this world of disappointment and unrealised fruition. As if fearful that the spirit of my loved princess should have already so far journeyed to the realms of bliss, that I might not be able to discern her when I had shaken off the incumbrance of an earthly body, and was at liberty to pursue, I seized a flask, and pouring out the water with a hand trembling with anxiety, drank off a glass. I was hastily refilling it, when the gurgling sound struck upon the ears of my companions, who rushing down like the fainting animals who hear the music of the fountain in the desert, poured tumultuously into the cabin, and in spite of all my remonstrances to leave me sufficient for the completion of my desires, seized upon the flask in my hand, as well as upon all those that remained, emptied them in a few seconds with their copious draughts, and returned laughing and shouting to the deck above.
The water which I had already drunk produced one good effect; it hardened my heart for the time, and I fell into a sort of stoical indifference, which lasted many hours. I then repaired on deck, where I found all my companions changed into blue chalcedony—not one alive. The heavens, too, had changed; clouds obscured the sun, the wind was rising, and ever and anon a mournful gust blew through the shrouds; the birds were screaming on the wing, and the water-line of the black horizon was fringed with a narrow ridge of foam. The thunder rolled at a distance, and I perceived that convulsion of the elements was at hand. The sails were all set, and without assistance I could not reduce them; but I was indifferent to my fate. The lightning now darted in every direction, and large drops of rain pattered on the deck. With the means of existence, the desire of life returned: I spread out the spare sails, and as the torrents descended, and the vessel bowed to her gunwale in submission of the blast, I filled the empty casks. I thought of nothing else until my task was completed. I strode carelessly over the bodies of my companions, the sails were blown from the yards, the yards themselves were snapt asunder, the top-masts fell over the sides, the vessel flew before the boiling surge; but I heeded not—I filled the casks with water. When I had finished my labours, a reaction took place, and I recollected the loss which I had sustained. I descended to the cabin. There she lay in all her beauty. I kissed the cold cheek, I wrapped up the adored image, carried it on deck, and launched it into the wave; and, as it disappeared under the raging billows, I felt as if my heart, in its struggles to escape, had burst the strings which confined it in my bosom, and leapt into the angry flood to join her. Exhausted with my feelings, I fell down in a swoon; how long I remained I cannot exactly say, but it was nearly dark when I lost my recollection, and broad daylight when I recovered. The vessel was still flying before the gale, which now roared in its resistless fury; the tattered fragments of the sails were blown out before the lower yards like so many streamers and pennants, and the wrecks of the topmasts were still towing alongside through the foaming surge. The indurated bodies of my companions were lying about the decks, washed by the water which poured into the vessel, as she rolled deeply from one side to the other, presenting her gunwales as if courting the admittance of the wave. “Are you, then, tired of your existence, as well as I?” thought I, apostrophising the vessel. “Have you found out at last, that while you swim you’ve nought to encounter but difficulty and danger? That you enter your haven but to renew your tasks, and again become a beast of burthen that when empty you must bow to the slightest breeze, and when laden must groan and labour for the good of others. Have—”
“Holy Prophet! I never heard of people talking to ships before, and I don’t understand it,” observed the pacha. “Leave out all you said to the ship, and all the ship said to you in reply, and go on with your story.”
The gale lasted for three days, and then it as suddenly fell calm. I had observed by the compass that we had been running to the eastward, and I supposed that we were not very far from the Western Isles. As I surveyed the bodies of my companions, it occurred to me that they ought to fetch a high price in Italy as specimens of art, and I resolved to dispose of them as the work of men. Having no other employment, I brought up the spare planks from below, and made packing-cases for them all. It was with some difficulty that I contrived, by means of tackles, to lower them to the hold, which I succeeded in accomplishing with safety excepting in one instance, when, from the tackle-fall giving way, the image fell to the bottom of the vessel, and being very brittle, was broken into pieces. As it was no longer of any value as a statue, I broke it up to examine it, and I can assure your highness that it was very wonderful to witness how every part of the human body was changed into flint, of a colour corresponding with that which it had been when living. The heart was red, and on my arrival in Italy I had several seals made from it, which were pronounced by the lapidaries who cut them to be of the finest blood-red cornelian. I have now a piece of the dark stone of which the liver was composed, which I keep for striking a light. As it afterwards proved, almost all of it was valuable, for the alternate fat and lean formed a variety of beautiful onyxes and sardonyx, which I disposed of very advantageously to the cameo engravers. I was several days employed in packing up, but I had plenty of provisions and water, and had no doubt that I should be seen by some vessel before they were expended. Three weeks had elapsed, when one morning I went on deck, and saw land on both sides of me. I immediately recognised the rock of Gibraltar, and the Straits, through which I was drifting. I was boarded by a Spanish gun-boat from Algesiras, and having stated that all my crew had died two months before of the yellow fever, I was towed in, put into quarantine for forty days, and then permitted to equip my vessel and procure sailors. This I was enabled to do by selling two of the flasks which held the water, and which, like all the other utensils of the island from which I had escaped, were of pure gold.
I did not think it prudent to go to Leghorn, where not only the vessel might be recognised, and the widow give me some trouble, but the statues also might have been identified as the men who had sailed in the vessel, and occasion my being burnt as a necromancer by the Inquisition. I directed my course for Naples, where I arrived in safety. Having disembarked my metamorphosed crew, I hired a large room to exhibit them, and expected to realise a considerable sum; but as I could not name the artist, and the figures had not the grace which the Italians admire, they remained on my hands, and were even found fault with as not being well executed. I sold two of the least prepossessing to a Sicilian nobleman, who I understood had a large country seat decorated with monstrosities; and I then determined, as I had received a high price for the pieces of the one which had been broken up, to retail the others in the same way. It answered admirably, and I received more money for the fragments than I had asked for the images in an unmutilated state. The remainder of the golden flasks also realised a large sum; I produced them one by one, and disposed of them to English collectors, as having been purloined by the excavators from the ruins of Pompeii. I had now plenty of money, and resolved to return to my native city. An opportunity offering, I embarked, and safely arrived at Marseilles.