They were already far out upon the seething water when an appalling vision burst upon his sight. In the heart of a black squall a great barge full of fire came flying towards the city, and the fire was full of demons, and fiery fiends swung red-hot oars that hissed each time they dipped into the water. The poor fisherman gave himself up for lost and fell upon his knees, but behind him in the stern of the boat the three majestic passengers stood upright and made the sign of the cross with wide and potent gestures; and suddenly the fiery barge stood still as if she had struck a rock and was thrown into the air, and turning upside down fell with all her fiery crew hissing into the raging sea, and all was dark, and suddenly the storm subsided and the moon shone out between the clouds as on a summer’s night. [Sidenote: _About 1340._] [Sidenote: _The fisherman gives the ring to the Doge Gradenigo, Paris Bordone; Accademia._] Then said the oldest of the three old men to the fisherman, ‘Take me to the island of Saint George, for there I dwell.’ And the fisherman put him ashore there. The second of the old men then said, ‘I am Saint Nicholas, take me over to the Lido.’ The fisherman set him ashore there, wondering at his own strength, for it is far. Then said the last, ‘I am Saint Mark, set me ashore at the Piazza.’ When they were there the fisherman fell upon his face before the saint, who raised him up and gave him his blessing, and, moreover, bade him go at once to the Doge, though it was late, and tell him what he had seen, and to prove that it was truth and not a dream the saint drew from his finger a ring and gave it to the fisherman as a token. The legend has been too often told for me to dwell upon what followed, but it contrasts characteristically with the tale of the little Countess Tagliapietra, which is only forty years older, but which still retains that subtle perfume, that air of peace and light, which belong to the earlier Venetian legends. The story of the fisherman belongs already to those nightmare tales of terror which became so very common in Venice that in the sixteenth century all the popular tales represent devils and fiends struggling against the supernatural powers of saints. Last of all, even the saints and demons disappeared, and the degenerate eighteenth century expressed its love of fiction in a set of ghost stories as terrifying as any that the human imagination has ever evolved out of darkness.