“No, no,” said he, “it is not for me to attend so high a blissfulness: but since you take care of me, I pray you find means that some barque may be provided, that will go out of the haven that if it be possible we may find the body, far, far too precious food for fishes: and for that hire I have within this casket of value sufficient to content them.” Claius presently went to a fisherman, and having agreed with him, and provided some apparel for the naked stranger, he embarked, and the shepherds with him: and were no sooner gone beyond the mouth of the haven, but that some way into the sea they might discern, as it were, a stain of the water’s colour, and by times some sparks and smoke mounting thereout. But the young man no sooner saw it, but that beating his breast he cried that there was the beginning of his ruin, entreating them to bend their course as near unto it as they could; telling, how that smoke was but a small relique of a great fire which had driven both him and {5} his friend rather to commit themselves to the cold mercy of the sea than to abide the hot cruelty of the fire; and that therefore, though they both had abandoned the ship, that he was (if any were) in that course to be met withal. They steered therefore as near thitherward as they could: but when they came so near that their eyes were full masters of the object, they saw a sight full of piteous strangeness: a ship, or rather the carcase of the ship, or rather some few bones of the carcase hulling there, part broken, part burned, part drowned: death having used more than one dart to that destruction. About it floated great store of very rich things and many chests which might promise no less. And amidst the precious things were a number of dead bodies, which likewise did not only testify both elements’ violence, but that the chief violence was grown of human inhumanity: for their bodies were full of grisly wounds, and their blood had (as it were) filled the wrinkles of the sea’s visage; which it seemed the sea would not wash away, that it might witness that it is not always its fault when we do condemn its cruelty. In sum, a defeat where the conquered kept both field and spoil: a shipwreck without storm or ill-footing: and a waste of fire in the midst of the water.