deliverance till the end of my days, and when I had spent two or three hours upon the branch between hope and fear there came down the Rhine that very ship for which I was to help lie in wait. So I lifted up my voice piteously and screamed for help in the name of God and the last Judgment, and because they must needs pass close to me, and therefore the more clearly see my wretched plight, all in the ship were moved to pity, so that they put to land to devise how best to help me. And because, by reason of the many eddies that were all round me (being caused by the roots and branches of the tree), it was not possible to swim out to me without risk of life nor to come to me with any vessel, small or great, my helping needed much thought: and how I fared in mind meanwhile is easy to guess. At last they sent two fellows into the river above me with a boat, that let a rope float down to me and kept one end of it themselves. The other end I with great trouble did secure, and bound it round my body as well as I could, so that I was drawn up by it into the boat like a fish on a line and so brought into the ship. So now when I had in this fashion escaped death, I had done well to fall on my knees on the bank and thank God's goodness for my deliverance, and moreover then begin to amend my life as I had vowed and promised in my deadly need. But far from it. For when they asked me who I was and how I had come into this peril I began so to lie to the people that it might have made the heavens turn black: for I thought, if thou sayst thou wast minded to help plunder them, they will cast thee into the Rhine again. So I gave myself out for a banished organist, and said that as I would to Strassburg to seek a place as schoolmaster or the like on the upper Rhine, a party had captured me and stripped me and thrown me into the Rhine, which brought me to that same tree. And as I contrived to trick out these my lies finely, and also strengthened them with oaths, I was believed, and all kindness shewn me in the matter of food and drink to refresh me, of which I had great need indeed.