Ever since the storm had carried us near the shore, we had never attained any great distance from it.  With every flash I saw the bordering coast; yet the progress I made was small, while each wave, as it receded, carried me back into ocean’s far abysses.  At one moment I felt my foot touch the sand, and then again I was in deep water; my arms began to lose their power of motion; my breath failed me under the influence of the strangling waters—­ a thousand wild and delirious thoughts crossed me:  as well as I can now recall them, my chief feeling was, how sweet it would be to lay my head on the quiet earth, where the surges would no longer strike my weakened frame, nor the sound of waters ring in my ears—­to attain this repose, not to save my life, I made a last effort—­the shelving shore suddenly presented a footing for me.  I rose, and was again thrown down by the breakers—­a point of rock to which I was enabled to cling, gave me a moment’s respite; and then, taking advantage of the ebbing of the waves, I ran forwards—­ gained the dry sands, and fell senseless on the oozy reeds that sprinkled them.

I must have lain long deprived of life; for when first, with a sickening feeling, I unclosed my eyes, the light of morning met them.  Great change had taken place meanwhile:  grey dawn dappled the flying clouds, which sped onwards, leaving visible at intervals vast lakes of pure ether.  A fountain of light arose in an encreasing stream from the east, behind the waves of the Adriatic, changing the grey to a roseate hue, and then flooding sky and sea with aerial gold.

A kind of stupor followed my fainting; my senses were alive, but memory was extinct.  The blessed respite was short—­a snake lurked near me to sting me into life—­on the first retrospective emotion I would have started up, but my limbs refused to obey me; my knees trembled, the muscles had lost all power.  I still believed that I might find one of my beloved companions cast like me, half alive, on the beach; and I strove in every way to restore my frame to the use of its animal functions.  I wrung the brine from my hair; and the rays of the risen sun soon visited me with genial warmth.  With the restoration of my bodily powers, my mind became in some degree aware of the universe of misery, henceforth to be its dwelling.  I ran to the water’s edge, calling on the beloved names.  Ocean drank in, and absorbed my feeble voice, replying with pitiless roar.  I climbed a near tree:  the level sands bounded by a pine forest, and the sea clipped round by the horizon, was all that I could discern.  In vain I extended my researches along the beach; the mast we had thrown overboard, with tangled cordage, and remnants of a sail, was the sole relic land received of our wreck.  Sometimes I stood still, and wrung my hands.  I accused earth and sky —­the universal machine and the Almighty power that misdirected it.  Again I threw myself on the sands, and then the sighing wind, mimicking a human cry, roused me to bitter, fallacious hope.  Assuredly if any little bark or smallest canoe had been near, I should have sought the savage plains of ocean, found the dear remains of my lost ones, and clinging round them, have shared their grave.