As a sick man in a dream thinks, and yet thinks not, that he sees some dreadful monster, and, notwithstanding his doubt, wishes to fly from the horrible perplexity; so the trembling lover, though suspecting what he beheld, had so frightful an image before his thoughts of Clorinda weeping and wailing after death, and bleeding in her very soul, that he had not the heart to do more, or to remain in the place.  He returned in bewildered sorrow to Godfrey, and told him all.  “It is not in my power,” he said, “to touch another bough of that forest."[5]

The astonished leader of the Christians now made up his mind to go himself; and so, with prayer and valour united, bring this appalling adventure to some conclusion.  But the hermit Peter dissuaded him.  The holy man, in an ecstacy of foreknowledge, beheld the coming of the only champion fated to conclude it; and Godfrey himself the same night had a vision from heaven, bidding him grant the petition of those who should sue him next day for the recall of Rinaldo from exile—­Rinaldo, the right hand of the army, as Godfrey was its head.

The petition was made as soon as daylight appeared; and two knights, Carlo and Ubaldo, were despatched in search of the fated hero.

Part the Fourth

THE LOVES OF RINALDO AND ARMIDA.

The knights, with information procured on the road from a good wizard, struck off for the sea-coast, and embarking in a pinnace which miraculously awaited them, sailed along the shores of the Mediterranean for the retreat of Armida.  They saw the Egyptian army assembled at Gaza, but hoped to return with Rinaldo before it could effect anything at Jerusalem.  They passed the mouths of the Nile, and Alexandria, and Cyrene, and Ptolemais, and the cities of the Moors, and the dangers of the Greater and Lesser Whirlpools, and their pilot showed them the spot where Carthage stood,—­Carthage, now a dead city, whose grave is scarcely discernible.  For cities die; kingdoms die;—­a little sand and grass covers all that was once lofty in them and glorious.  And yet man, forsooth, disdains that he is mortal!  Oh, mind of ours, inordinate and proud![6]

After looking towards the site of Carthage, they passed Algiers, and Oran, and Tingitana, and beheld the opposite coast of Spain, and then they cleared the narrow sea of Gibraltar, and came out into the immeasurable ocean, leaving all sight of land behind them; and so speeding ever onward in the billows, they beheld at last a cluster of mountainous and beautiful islands; the larger ones inhabited by a simple people, the smaller quite wild and desolate.  So at least they appeared.  But in one of these smaller islands was the mountain, on the top of which, in the indulgence of every lawless pleasure, lay the champion of the Christian faith.  This the pilot shewed to the two knights, and then steered the pinnace into its bay; and here, after a voyage of four days and nights, it dropped its sails without need of anchor, so mild and sheltered was the port, with natural moles curving towards the entrance, and evergreen woods overhead.