"To keep her safe and inviolate
is more my right and interest than yours, and it must therefore be my
especial duty to do so; but if I fail in it, I care not though you make
my life the forfeit, nor by what mode you exact it."
So saying, he took his place at the helm, a press of sail was set, and
the ship fairly rent her way through the sea of Marmora before the
tempest. But the ship, like all around, seemed to acknowledge his
controlling power; and when I turned in with my watch, my sleep was
undisturbed by any fear of wind or water, though it was full of troubled
dreams. Now a lovely form in royal vesture beckoned to me from a
lattice; anon the gleam of a lantern flickered across the terribly
familiar face of a gnome, bearing out of a dark cavern an armful of
the most precious jewels, which had a wild appealing in their light
that puzzled me; while the roaring of the sea pervaded it all with a
kind of dream harmony.
After a time, the fury of the tempest abated; but the ship still fled
onward before strong gales, through those famous seas we had cruised
so often in youthful fancy with the Greek and the Trojan, and the fear
of pursuit ceased to haunt us.
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