So it was, and as we drove on, ever nearer the fatal coast, it swung round again to the southerly, and the sun above us blazed out fitfully from among the breaking clouds.
“Heaven fights for us,” said Ludar. “Quick, rig up a sail forward and fly a yard; and do you, seaman, look to your charts and say where we are.”
“That I have done long since,” said the sailor. “We are scarce a league from the Holy Island, and ’tis full time we put her head out, sir.”
“Come and take the helm then.”
For a while it seemed as if we were to expect as wild a tempest from the south as ever we had met from the east. But towards evening, the wind slackened a bit, and, veering south-east, enabled us to stand clear of the coast, and make, battered and ill canvassed as we were, straight for the Scotch Forth.
The maiden slept all through that night, and when at dawn she came on deck, fresh and singing, we were tumbling merrily through a slackening sea, with the Bass Rock looming on the horizon.
“Methinks the jaded Greek felt not otherwise when, leaving behind him the blood-stained plains of Troy, he espied the cloud-topped mountains of Hellas,” said the poet, who joined us as we stood.
“Which means,” said the maiden, “you are glad?”
“Shall Pyramus rejoice to see the wall that hides him from his Thisbe? or Hector leap at the trumpet which parts him from his Andromache? Mistress mine, in yonder rock shall I read my doom?”
“Rather read us your ode, Sir Poet,” said she. “It has had a stormy hatching, and should be a tempestuous outburst.”