Meanwhile Leander on the other side had seen the storm approaching, and he knew full well that when the seas ran high no man could swim the channel and reach the other shore alive. So he sat by his window and longed for the storm to be spent and the day to dawn; for the night without Hero was to him but misery. Across the stream he could see the torch burning fitfully in the gale. "The gods grant she think me not faithless," he said, "for not going to her this night." As he sat and watched, the storm grew wilder and more terrible. In the swirling, seething waters the Nereid danced with the madness of the tempest in her heart, up and down over the crested waves, with the storm wind whistling through her hair. In the gleam of the lightning-flash she held out her arms to the shore and called, "Come and dance with me. Leander, O Leander, come!" As she called, the east wind rushed with a wild shriek across the water, and blew out the beacon light in Hero's chamber. Leander at his window saw the pale light disappear and return no more. A blinding flash of lightning rent the sky, and the rattle of the thunder sounded as though the mountains of the earth were falling. Then the spirit of the storm came upon him too, and he heard the voice of the sea-nymph calling with a wild, unearthly shriek, "Leander, O Leander, come!" And he thought it was the voice of Hero calling him in deadly peril. Perchance the thunderbolt had struck her tower, and it had crashed in ruins about her and borne her with its falling stones into the rushing stream below. In a mad frenzy, scarce knowing what he did, he plunged into the seething waters and struggled in the waves with the strength of despair. With a wild cry of joy the sea-nymph caught him in her arms. "At last, at last, thou hast heard my call," she said. Up and down through the hissing waves she bore him, now plunging down, deep, deep, into the calm green water below, now rushing round and round in a whirlpool, now leaping from the crest of one white wave into the boiling foam of the next, till he lay limp and breathless in her arms. She heeded not, but bore him on, ever on, across the water till they came beneath Hero's tower. Then, rising on the crest of the waves that beat against the wall, she called, "Come, join with us in the storm-dance! Come, Hero, Hero!"