With that he went to the helm, where indeed the maiden must have needed succour. And there he stayed beside her till the night passed. Afterwards he told me that he found her there, half stunned by the wind, but never flinching, or yielding a point out of the course. "I know not if she was pleased to see me there," said he. "She said little enough, and hardly surrendered me the tiller. But when we put the ship into the wind, there was little to do, save to stand and watch the sea, and shield ourselves as best we might from the force of the waves that leapt over the poop." And fierce enough they were, in truth. But what was worse was that our course now lay due west, bringing us every league nearer the coast. Should the tempest last much longer we might have a sterner peril to face on the iron Northumbrian shore than ever we had escaped in the open sea. The night passed and morning saw us driving headlong, with but one mast standing and not a sail to bless it. The maiden who had stood at her post since sundown yielded at last and came down, pale and drenched, to her quarters. The poet too, who had clung all night to the halyards, looking faithfully ahead and polishing his ode inwardly at the same time, also crawled abaft, half frozen and stupid with drowsiness. Indeed, there was little any of us could do, and one by one Ludar ordered us to rest, while he, whom no labour seemed to daunt, clung doggedly to the helm. Thus half that day the wind flung us forward, till presently, far on the horizon, we could discern the sullen outline of a cliff. "We are lost!" said I. "Humphrey, you are a fool," said Ludar. "See you not the wind is backing fast?" 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?"