declared that he had done a hellish deed, but when the fog cleared away they justified him, believing that the fog had been brought by the bird.  In this way they became accomplices in his crime.  By killing the albatross the Mariner had offended the Spirit of the South Pole, who now followed the ship “nine fathom deep” to make sure that vengeance was meted out to the guilty man.  As a sign of the Mariner’s guilt the sailors fastened about his neck the dead bird.  The vessel was now in the Pacific Ocean.  On nearing the equator she was becalmed, and before long all the sailors were dying of thirst.  Suddenly a skeleton ship appeared in sight, having on board Death and Life-in-Death.  The two spectres were throwing dice to see which should possess the doomed Mariner.  Life-in-Death won, and the Mariner was hers.  If Death had won, his life would soon have ended; as it was, existence for him was to mean—­for a time at least—­life in the midst of the dead.  No sooner had the spectre bark shot by than his comrades, four times fifty living men, dropped lifeless one by one.  For seven days and seven nights he suffered agonies from the curse in their stony eyes; but he could not die, and he could not pray.

One day, while watching some water snakes at play, he was charmed with their beauty and blessed them unawares—­a sure sign that love for God’s lower creatures was springing up in his heart.  The next instant the spell began to break:  the albatross fell from his neck into the sea and he could move his lips in prayer.  He slept, and the Holy Mother sent rain; and when he awoke the wind was blowing.  A troop of angelic spirits now entered the bodies of the dead sailors and worked the ropes, and, obedient to the angels, the Spirit of the South Pole helped the ship onward.  As she sped on, the Mariner, who lay in a swoon, learned from the talk of two spirits that his penance was not yet accomplished.  Soon after waking he beheld the shores of his native country.  As the vessel neared the land the angels left the bodies of the sailors, and at the same time a small boat approached bringing a pilot and his boy, and a pious hermit—­all known to the Mariner.  Suddenly there was a dreadful sound, and the ship sank.  On coming to his senses the Mariner found himself in the pilot’s boat.  When the hermit asked him, “What manner of man art thou?” his agony was fearful until he had found relief in telling his experience.  As a punishment for his crime in shooting the albatross the agony was to return at intervals and compel him to travel from land to land relating his strange tale.  After admonishing the wedding guest to love well both man and beast, the ancient Mariner departed.  The poet says of his listener,

  “A sadder and a wiser man
  He rose the morrow morn.”

[*]When The Ancient Mariner was reprinted in 1800, the poet added explanatory notes in the margin.  These have been found useful in writing this argument.  The poet’s notes are given in his Poetical Works, edited by James Dykes Campbell (1893).