from the air a spirit in likeness of a servant, whom he sent to the two combatants with directions to give them a false account of Orlando’s having gone off to France with Angelica.  The spirit disappeared; and the magician journeying with his companion to the sea-coast, raised another, who entered Angelica’s horse, and carried her, to her astonishment and terror, out to sea, and so round to some lonely rocks.  There, to her great comfort at first, the old man rejoined her; but his proceedings becoming very mysterious, and exciting her indignation, he cast her into a deep sleep.

It happened, at this moment, that a ship was passing by the rocks, bound upon a tragical commission from the island of Ebuda.  It was the custom of that place to consign a female daily to the jaws of a sea-monster, for the purpose of averting the wrath of one of their gods; and as it was thought that the god would be appeased if they brought him one of singular beauty, the mariners of the ship seized with avidity on the sleeping Angelica, and carried her off, together with the old man.  The people of Ebuda, out of love and pity, kept her, unexposed to the sea-monster, for some days; but at length she was bound to the rock where it was accustomed to seek its food; and thus, in tears and horror, with not a friend to look to, the delight of the world expected her fate.  East and west she looked in vain; to the heavens she looked in vain; every where she looked in vain.  That beauty which had made King Agrican come from the Caspian gates, with half Scythia, to find his death from the hands of Orlando; that beauty which had made King Sacripant forget both his country and his honour; that beauty which had tarnished the renown and the wisdom of the great Orlando himself, and turned the whole East upside down, and laid it at the feet of loveliness, has now not a soul near it to give it the comfort of a word.

Leaving our heroine awhile in this condition, I must now tell you that Ruggiero, the greatest of all the infidel warriors, had been presented by his guardian, the magician Atlantes, with two wonderful gifts; the one a shield of dazzling metal, which blinded and overthrew every one that looked at it; and the other an animal which combined the bird with the quadruped, and was called the Hippogriff, or griffin-horse.  It had the plumage, the wings, head, beak, and front-legs of a griffin, and the rest like a horse.  It was not made by enchantment, but was a creature of a natural kind found but very rarely in the Riphaean mountains, far on the other side of the Frozen Sea.[8]

With these gifts, high mounted in the air, the young ward of Atlantes was now making the grandest of grand tours.  He had for some time been confined by the magician in a castle, in order to save him from the dangers threatened in his horoscope.  From this he had been set free by the lady with whom he was destined to fall in love; he had then been inveigled by a wicked fairy into her tower, and set free by a good one; and now he was on his travels through the world, to seek his mistress and pursue knightly adventures.