LITMIR.BIZ

      “And who, alas, are better witnesses than we, whose experience is grounded upon feeling? Has not our love for her made us (being silly ignorant shepherds) raise our thoughts above the ordinary level of the world, so that great clerks do not disdain our conversation? Has not the desire to seem worthy in her eyes made us stay awake to view the course of the heavens, while others were sleeping? When others were running bases, we ran over learned writings. When others were marking their sheep, we were marking ourselves. Has she not bridled, as it were, our desires with reason, and given eyes to blind Cupid? Has any beloved besides her ever maintained friendship between rivals? Has any beauty but hers taught the beholders chastity?”

      He was going on with his praises, but Strephon bade him pause and look out to sea, where they both perceived a thing which floated and drew nearer and nearer to the shore, moved by the favorable current of the sea and not its own workings.

      They wondered a while what it might be, until it was cast up directly before them, at which time they fully saw that it was a man. When for pity’s sake they ran to him, they found his hands—more constant friends to his life than his memory—gripping hard on the edge of a small, square coffer under his chest but otherwise in him no sign of life, the box but a bier carrying him to land, to his sepulcher. They drew him up, a young man of so goodly shape and well-pleasing face that one would think death in him had a lovely countenance and that, even though he was naked, nakedness was to him clothing. That sight increased their compassion, and their compassion called up their care. Lifting his feet above his head, they made a great deal of salt water come out of his mouth, then laid him upon some of their garments and began to rub and chafe him till they brought him to recover both breath (the servant of living) and warmth (its companion).

      At length he opened his eyes and gave a great groan, a doleful note but a pleasant ditty, for by that they found not only life in him, but strength of life. They therefore continued their charitable business until, his spirits having well returned to him, he got up without so much as thanking them for their trouble and looked around to the uttermost limits of his sight, crying the name Pyrocles. Then neither seeing nor hearing cause of comfort, “What,” said he, “and shall Musidorus live after Pyrocles’ destruction?” With that, he willfully moved to cast himself into the sea, a strange sight for the shepherds. When he had seemed to be dead, they saved his life, but now upon returning to life, he seemed to wish to die. They ran to him and pulled him back, too feeble to resist them, and quelled his unnatural terror.

      “I pray you, honest men,” he said, “what right have you to keep me from doing what I choose with myself? What policy allows you to bestow a benefit where it is counted an injury?”

      Hearing him speak in Greek, their native language, they became even more tenderhearted towards him, and when they considered the way he had called out, they understood that the loss of some dear friend was causing his great sorrow. They told him that they were poor men bound by the court of humanity to prevent so great a calamity as his death, and if the thought of someone else’s death caused such desperate anguish in him, they wished him to be comforted by his own living proof, having just escaped as clear a danger.

      “No, no,” he said. “It is not for me to expect such high blissfulness. But since you are taking care of me, I pray you find some boat that will go out of the harbor, so that, if it is possible, we may find the body, far, far too precious to be food for fishes. For payment,” he added, “I have enough of value within this casket to content the sailors.”

      Claius presently went to a fisherman who, having made an agreement with him, provided apparel for the naked stranger and then embarked with the shepherds. They were no sooner gone beyond the mouth of the harbor than they discerned, some distance out at sea, a stain on the water’s color and, at times, some sparks and rising smoke.

      The young man no sooner saw it but, beating his breast, he cried that there was the beginning of his ruin, entreating them to bend their course as near unto it as they could. The smoke, he said, was but a small relic of a great fire which had driven both him and his friend to commit themselves to the cold mercy of the sea rather than abide the hot cruelty of the flames. His friend would be there if anywhere.

      They steered as near the wreck as they could, but when they came so near that their eyes were full masters of the object, they saw a sight full of piteous strangeness: a ship, or rather the carcass of the ship, or rather some few bones of the carcass, hulling there, part broken, part burned, part drowned, death having used more than one dart in that destruction. About it floated a great store of very rich things and many chests that promised no less. Amidst the precious things were a number of dead bodies, which testified not only to the violence of the elements, but that the chief violence arose from human inhumanity, for the bodies were full of grisly wounds and their blood had (as it were) filled the wrinkles of the sea’s visage. It seemed the sea would not wash away the blood, as if to witness that it is not always the sea’s fault when we condemn its cruelty. In sum, a defeat, where the conquered kept both field and spoil, a shipwreck without storm or ill footing, and a waste of fire in the midst of water.

      A little way off they saw a mast whose proud height lay now upon the sea, like a widow who had lost her mate of whom she held her honor. A young man who looked about eighteen years of age sat upon the mast as on horseback with nothing on him but his shirt which, wrought with blue silk and gold, resembled the sea on which the sun (then near its western home) shot some of its beams. His hair (which the young men of Greece used to wear very long) was stirred by the wind that sported with it while the sea kissed his feet. He was a man of admirable beauty, set forth by the strangeness both of his seat and gesture—for, holding his head up, full of unmoved majesty, he held a sword aloft and often waved it about his head, as though even in that extremity he would threaten the world.

      When the fishermen

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