No fisherman, shadowless, trod the sands; no pious hand lighted the fire of sacrifice in the vanishing twilight; even the herds failed to cry out for the coming day. Strange fears began to chill the hearts of the Thessalians. They walked upon a trackless way, and when they entered the dwellings they found them untenanted. Over the doorways hung vines dropping their grapes, and birds flew out at the open windows. They climbed a hill behind the town, and saw how the sea surrounded them. The land on which they stood was no promontory, but an island, separated by a foaming interval of water from the shore, which they now saw, not distant, but inaccessible. Then these miserable ones clung to each other on the summit of the rock, gazing, until they were fully persuaded of their misfortune. The winds waved and fluttered their garments, the waters uttered a voice breaking on the rocky shore, and rose mute upon the farther coast. The rain now began to fall from a morning cloud, and the travellers, for the first time, found shelter under a foreign roof. All day they watched the sails approaching the headlands, or veering widely away and beating towards unseen harbors, as when a bird driven by fear abandons its nest, but drawn by love returns and hovers around it. Four days and nights had passed before the troubled waves ceased to hinder the craft of the fisherman. The Greeks saw with joy that their signals were answered, and a boat approached, so that they could hear a man's voice crying to them,-- "What are you who dwell on the island of the profane, and gather fruits sacred to Apollo?" "If I may be said to dwell here," replied the old man, "it is contrary to my own will. I am a Greek of Thessaly. Apollo himself should not have forbidden me to gather the wild grapes of this island, since I and this child and Eleusa, my wife, have not during many days found other food." "It is indeed true," exclaimed the boatman, "that madness presently falls upon those who eat of these grapes, since you speak impious words against the god. Behold, yonder is woody Tenedos, where his altar stands; it is now many years, since, filled with wrath against the dwellers here, he seized this rock, and hurled it into the sea; the very hills melted in the waves. I myself, a child then, beheld the waters violently urged upon the land. Moved without winds, they rose, climbing upon the very roofs of the houses. When the sea became calm, a gulf lay between this and the coast, and what had been a promontory was left forever an island. Nor has any man dared to dwell upon it, nor to gather its accursed fruits. Many men have I known who saw gods walking upon this shore, visible sometimes on the high cliffs inaccessible to human feet. Therefore, if you, being a stranger, have ignorantly trespassed on this garden, which the divinities reserve, perhaps for their own pleasure, strive to escape their resentment and offer sacrifices on the altar of Tenedos."