The water which I had already drunk produced one good effect; it hardened my heart for the time, and I fell into a sort of stoical indifference, which lasted many hours.  I then repaired on deck, where I found all my companions changed into blue chalcedony—­not one alive.  The heavens, too, had changed; clouds obscured the sun, the wind was rising, and ever and anon a mournful gust blew through the shrouds; the birds were screaming on the wing, and the water line of the black horizon was fringed with a narrow ridge of foam.  The thunder rolled at a distance, and I perceived that convulsion of the elements was at hand.  The sails were all set, and without assistance I could not reduce them; but I was indifferent to my fate.  The lightning now darted in every direction, and large drops of rain pattered on the deck.  With the means of existence, the desire of life returned:  I spread out the spare sails, and as the torrents descended, and the vessel bowed to her gunwale in submission of the blast, I filled the empty casks.  I thought of nothing else until my task was completed.  I strode carelessly over the bodies of my companions, the sails were blown from the yards, the yards themselves were snapped asunder, the topmasts fell over the sides, the vessel flew before the boiling surge; but I heeded not—­I filled the casks with water.  When I had finished my labours, a reaction took place, and I recollected the loss which I had sustained.  I descended to the cabin.  There she lay in all her beauty.  I kissed the cold cheek, I wrapped up the adored image, carried it on deck, and launched it into the wave; and, as it disappeared under the raging billows, I felt as if my heart, in its struggles to escape, had burst the strings which confined it in my bosom, and had leapt into the angry flood to join her.  Exhausted with my feelings, I fell down in a swoon; how long I remained I cannot exactly say, but it was nearly dark when I lost my recollection, and broad daylight when I recovered.  The vessel was still flying before the gale, which now roared in its resistless fury; the tattered fragments of the sails were blown out before the lower yards like so many streamers and pennants, and the wrecks of the topmasts were still towing alongside through the foaming surge.  The indurated bodies of my companions were lying about the decks, washed by the water which poured into the vessel, as she rolled deeply from one side to the other, presenting her gunwales as if courting the admittance of the wave.  “Are you, then, tired of your existence, as well as I?” thought I, apostrophising the vessel.  “Have you found out at last, that while you swim you’ve nought to encounter but difficulty and danger?  That you enter your haven but to renew your tasks, and again become a beast of burthen; that when empty you must bow to the slightest breeze, and when laden must groan and labour for the good of others.  Have——­”

* * * * *

“Holy prophet!  I never heard of people talking to ships before, and I don’t understand it,” observed the pacha.  “Leave out all you said to the ship, and all the ship said to you in reply, and go on with your story.”