Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/327

 And now most of the cargo has gone overboard, but even these losses do not ease the vessel; so in his extremity the skipper had to fall back upon cutting away the mast, and so find a way out of his straits—a dire pass indeed when no remedy can be found but one that diminishes the ship! Go now, and commit your life to the winds! Go trust yourself to a hewn plank which parts you from death by four finger-breadths, or seven if it be extra thick! Only remember in future, besides your bread and your bread-basket and your pot-bellied flagon, to take with you axes also for use in time of storm.

But soon the sea fell flat, and our mariners came on better times. Destiny proved stronger than wind and wave; the glad Fates, with kindly hand, spun a yarn of white wool, there sprang up what was no stronger than a gentle breeze, under which the poor ship sped on by the sorry help of out-stretched garments, and the single sail now left to her on her prow. Soon the winds abated, and out came the sun, bringing hope of life; and then there came into view the beetling height so dear to Iulus, and preferred by him for his abode to his step-mother's Lavinum, a height that took its name from the white sow whose wondrous womb made glad the Phrygians' hearts, and gained fame for her thirty teats—a sight never seen before!

And now at length the ship comes within the moles built out to enclose the sea. She passes the Tyrrhenian Pharos, and those arms which stretch out and meet again in mid-ocean, leaving Italy far behind—a port more wondrous far than those of 241