The shipwrecked voyagers found an earthly paradise; and long afterward Andrew Marvel immortalized, in a lovely poem, the boat song of the exiles while they dreamed away the long months before they could reach the haven to which they were bound. May I, too, be allowed to dream awhile, pausing in my story of misery, cold, ingratitude, war, famine, and pestilence? Perhaps some of my readers may have forgotten the poem, and will forgive me for recalling part of it:-- "Where the remote Bermudas ride In the ocean's bosom unespied, From a small boat that rowed along The listening winds received this song: "'What should we do but sing His praise That led us through the watery maze Unto an isle so long unknown And yet far kinder than our own? Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks That lift the deep upon their backs; He lands us on a grassy stage Safe from the storms and prelate's rage. He gave us this eternal spring Which here enamels everything. He hangs in shades the orange bright-- Like golden lamps in a green night; And does, in the pomegranites close Jewels more rich than Ormus shewes. He makes the figs our mouths to meet, And throws the melons at our feet: And makes the hollow seas that roar Proclaim the ambergrease on shore. He cast (of which we needs must boast) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast; And in these rocks, for us, did frame A temple where to sound His name. O let our voice His praise exalt Till it arrive at heaven's vault; Which then perhaps resounding may Echo beyond the Mexique bay!' "Thus sang they in the English boat A holy and a cheerful note, And all the way, to guide their chime With falling oars they kept the time." The brave old Christian Admiral immediately set about the building of a cedar ship in which to return to his duty. From the wreck of the _Sea Venture_ he brought a bell ashore, hung it on a tree, and rung it for morning and evening prayers and for Sunday services. There was one "merry English marriage" on the island and two births--a boy and a girl, to whom the names "Bermudas" and "Bermuda" were given. The latter was the daughter of John Rolfe. And here too was found the largest piece of ambergris in the then known world, weighing eighty pounds. Ambergris, so highly prized and so costly, was long "a beauty and a mystery" to its admirers. Was it the solidified foam of the sea or the tears of the mermaid? Science declares that the whale's intestines, irritated by starfish, evolves the gum. They are an interesting party, these sea adventurers on the lovely island--these finders of treasure; but our stage is set on an island of a far different character, where the actors neither smile nor sing, nor build boats for escape, but are chained by inexorable fate to a hard lot. Our place in this story is with them.