from Canto II

101

Meantime the current, with a rising gale,
     Still set them onwards to the welcome shore,
Like Charon’s bark of spectres, dull and pale:
     Their living freight was now reduced to four,
And three dead, whom their strength could not avail
     To heave into the deep with those before,
Though the two sharks still follow’d them, and dash’d
The spray into their faces as they splash’d.

102

Famine, despair, cold, thirst, and heat, had done
     Their work on them by turns, and thinn’d them to
Such things a mother had not known her son
     Amidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew;
By night chill’d, by day scorch’d, thus one by one
     They perish’d, until wither’d to these few,
But chiefly by a species of self-slaughter,
In washing down Pedrillo with salt water.

103

As they drew nigh the land, which now was seen
     Unequal in its aspect here and there,
They felt the freshness of its growing green,
     That waved in forest-tops, and smooth’d the air,
And fell upon their glazed eyes like a screen
     From glistening waves, and skies so hot and bare—
Lovely seem’d any object that should sweep
Away the vast, salt, dread, eternal deep.

104

The shore look’d wild, without a trace of man,
     And girt by formidable waves; but they
Were mad for land, and thus their course they ran,
     Though right ahead the roaring breakers lay:
A reef between them also now began
     To show its boiling surf and bounding spray,
But finding no place for their landing better,
They ran the boat for shore, and overset her.

105

But in his native stream, the Guadalquivir,
     Juan to lave his youthful limbs was wont;
And having learnt to swim in that sweet river,
     Had often turn’d the art to some account:
A better swimmer you could scarce see ever,
    He could, perhaps, have pass’d the Hellespont,
As once (a feat on which ourselves we prided)
Leander, Mr. Ekenhead, and I did.

106

So here, though faint, emaciated, and stark,
     He buoy’d his boyish limbs, and strove to ply
With the quick wave, and gain, ere it was dark,
     The beach which lay before him, high and dry:
The greatest danger here was from a shark,
     That carried off his neighbour by the thigh;
As for the other two they could not swim,
So nobody arrived on shore but him.

107

Nor yet had he arrived but for the oar,
    Which, providentially for him, was wash’d
Just as his feeble arms could strike no more,
    And the hard wave o’erwhelm’d him as ‘twas dash’d
Within his grasp; he clung to it, and sore
    The waters beat while he thereto was lash’d;
At last, with swimming, wading, scrambling, he
Roll’d on the beach, half senseless, from the sea:

108

There, breathless, with his digging nails he clung
     Fast to the sand, lest the returning wave,
From whose reluctant roar his life he wrung,
    Should suck him back to her insatiate grave:
And there he lay, full length, where he was flung,
     Before the entrance of a cliff-worn cave,
With just enough of life to feel its pain,
And deem that it was saved, perhaps, in vain.

109

With slow and staggering effort he arose,
     But sunk again upon his bleeding knee
And quivering hand; and then he look’d for those
     Who long had been his mates upon the sea,
But none of them appear’d to share his woes,
     Save one, a corpse from out the famish’d three,
Who died two days before, and now had found
An unknown barren beach for burial ground.

110

And as he gazed, his dizzy brain spun fast,
     And down he sunk; and as he sunk, the sand
Swam round and round, and all his senses pass’d:
     He fell upon his side, and his stretch’d hand
Droop’d dripping on the oar, (their jury-mast)
     And, like a wither’d lily, on the land
His slender frame and pallid aspect lay,
As fair a thing as e’er was form’d of clay.