Then Iseult cried out:  “God does not will that I should live to see him, my love, once—­even one time more.  God wills my drowning in this sea.  O, Tristan, had I spoken to you but once again, it is little I should have cared for a death come afterwards.  But now, my love, I cannot come to you; for God so wills it, and that is the core of my grief.”

And thus the Queen complained so long as the storm endured; but after five days it died down.  Kaherdin hoisted the sail, the white sail, right up to the very masthead with great joy; the white sail, that Tristan might know its colour from afar:  and already Kaherdin saw Britanny far off like a cloud.  Hardly were these things seen and done when a calm came, and the sea lay even and untroubled.  The sail bellied no longer, and the sailors held the ship now up, now down, the tide, beating backwards and forwards in vain.  They saw the shore afar off, but the storm had carried their boat away and they could not land.  On the third night Iseult dreamt this dream:  that she held in her lap a boar’s head which befouled her skirts with blood; then she knew that she would never see her lover again alive.

Tristan was now too weak to keep his watch from the cliff of the Penmarks, and for many long days, within walls, far from the shore, he had mourned for Iseult because she did not come.  Dolorous and alone, he mourned and sighed in restlessness:  he was near death from desire.

At last the wind freshened and the white sail showed.  Then it was that Iseult of the White Hands took her vengeance.

She came to where Tristan lay, and she said: 

“Friend, Kaherdin is here.  I have seen his ship upon the sea.  She comes up hardly—­yet I know her; may he bring that which shall heal thee, friend.”

And Tristan trembled and said: 

“Beautiful friend, you are sure that the ship is his indeed?  Then tell me what is the manner of the sail?”

“I saw it plain and well.  They have shaken it out and hoisted it very high, for they have little wind.  For its colour, why, it is black.”

And Tristan turned him to the wall, and said: 

“I cannot keep this life of mine any longer.”  He said three times:  “Iseult, my friend.”  And in saying it the fourth time, he died.

Then throughout the house, the knights and the comrades of Tristan wept out loud, and they took him from his bed and laid him on a rich cloth, and they covered his body with a shroud.  But at sea the wind had risen; it struck the sail fair and full and drove the ship to shore, and Iseult the Fair set foot upon the land.  She heard loud mourning in the streets, and the tolling of bells in the minsters and the chapel towers; she asked the people the meaning of the knell and of their tears.  An old man said to her: 

“Lady, we suffer a great grief.  Tristan, that was so loyal and so right, is dead.  He was open to the poor; he ministered to the suffering.  It is the chief evil that has ever fallen on this land.”