The next day but one, they found the wind bearing them down upon another mountain in the sea, black as coal, reaching steep down to the sea, and whose top they could hardly see, but yet wrapt in soft mists.  When they came near it, the sole remaining of the three last come brethren jumped out of the ship and waded to shore.  Suddenly he showed signs of terror, and cried out that he was being carried away and could not return.  The brethren in horror pushed the ship away from land, and started towards the South.  When they looked back they saw flames shooting up from the top of the mountain, and then sinking in again, and again surging up.  It is a phenomenon familiar to any one who has watched the top of a volcano—­often even of iron-works—­and which has been splendidly described in the account of the burning essence of life in She.  From this sight they fled and journeyed for seven days toward the South.

We now reach an incident founded upon that fact from the contemplation of which the human mind perhaps shrinks more than from any other.  But the literary treatment of it is so curious and striking, and is rendered all the more so, at least to me, because I am aware of only one other attempt to grapple with it in the whole cycle of human invention, and that in the very highest sphere of imaginative literature, that I think that you will forgive me if I deal with it, and give at any-rate a part of it in full.  ‘And after these things,’ says the novelist, ’the Father Brendan saw as it were a very thick mist, and when they drew nigh thereto, there appeared unto them a little shape as it had been the shape of a man sitting upon a stone, and before him a veil of the size of a bag hanging between two forks of iron, and thus the waves beat him about as it were a boat when it is in peril in a tempest.  And when the brethren saw it, some of them thought that it had been a bird, and others thought that it had been a ship.  Then the man of God answered them, “Brethren, let be this strife, and turn the ship unto the place.”  And when the man of God drew nigh thereto, the waves round about stood still as though they had been frozen.  And they found sitting upon a stone a man shaggy and mis-shapen, and from every side when the waves came upon him, they smote him up to the crown of his head; and when again they fell away from him then was seen the stone whereon the unhappy one sat.  And the wind moved about from time to time the cloth that was before him, and it smote him upon the eyes and upon the forehead.  And when the blessed one asked him who he was, and for what fault he was set there, and how he had merited such punishment, he said, “I am that most unhappy Judas, the worst of bargainers.  Neither for any desert of mine do I have this place, but through the pardon and pity of the Redeemer of the world, and in honour of His holy resurrection, have I this rest” (now, it was the Lord’s Day), “and when I sit here it seemeth to me as though I were in the Garden of Eden, by reason of