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272 although their progress was somewhat slower than usual, as they now had their sister to carry. Dark clouds began gathering toward the evening, and Elisa anxiously saw the sun sinking, and yet there was no sign of the lonely rock in the ocean. It appeared to her as if the swans were making greater efforts with their wings. Alas! she was the cause of their not being able to get on fast enough; when the sun had gone down they would become human beings and fall into the sea and be drowned. She then prayed to our Lord from the bottom of her heart, but no rock could as yet be seen. The black cloud came nearer ; the violent gusts of wind foretold a storm ; the clouds gathered in one great, threatening wave, which moved forward like a solid mass of lead, while one flash of lightning followed upon another.

The sun was now close to the edge of the ocean. Elisa's heart trembled; the swans then darted downward so suddenly that she thought she must fall out of the net, but soon they sailed on again through the air. The sun was half-way under the horizon, and just then she caught sight of the little rock below them; it did not appear larger than the head of a seal above water. The sun was sinking rapidly; now it seemed no larger than a star, and then her foot touched the firm ground; the sun went out like the last spark in a piece of burning paper. She saw her brothers standing round her, arm in arm, but there was only just room enough for them all. The sea dashed against the rock and descended upon them like a heavy shower of rain; the heavens were continually lighted up with flashes of fire, and peal after peal of thunder followed each other; but sister and brothers held each other by the hands and sang a psalm, from which they received both comfort and courage.

At daybreak the air was pure and quite still. As soon as the sun rose the swans flew away with Elisa from the rock. The sea was still high, and, to them, who were so high up in the air, the white foam on the dark green waves appeared like millions of swans swimming on the waters.

When the sun had risen higher Elisa saw before her, half floating in the air, an alpine country with glittering masses of ice on the mountains, in the midst of which lay a palace almost a mile long, with one colonnade daringly piled above another, while below were forests of waving palms and luxurious flowers as large as mill-wheels. She asked if this was the country whither she was going, but the swans shook their heads, for what she saw was nothing but the magnificent and ever-changing aerial castle of Fata Morgana; thither they dared not bring any human being. Elisa was still gazing at it when the mountains, forests, and palace all tumbled together, and in their place stood twenty stately churches, all alike, with high steeples and pointed windows. She thought she heard the sound of an organ, but it was the sea she heard. Now she was quite close to the churches, when they changed into a whole fleet of ships that were sailing below her. She looked down and found it was only clouds of sea-mist