The Atlantic Monthly, page 19 by Various Authors
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r Troas received them into their vessel, and the voyage began.
The Greeks lamented when they beheld the shores of Asia. Heavy clouds and the coming night concealed the landmarks which should have guided their approach, and, buffeted by the uncertain winds, they waited for the morning. By the light of dawn, they saw before them an unknown harbor, and the dwellings of men; and here the mariners determined to be rid of their passengers, who vexed them by their fears; while to these three any port seemed desirable, and they readily consented to put off towards the shore. At the hour when the winds rise, at early dawn, they gladly parted from the seamen and the tossing ship, and took the way before them to the little town.
No fisherman, shadowless, trod the sands; no pious hand lighted the fire of sacrifice in the vanishing twilight; even the herds failed to cry out for the coming day. Strange fears began to chill the hearts of the Thessalians. They walked upon a trackless way, and when they entered the dwellings they found them untenanted. Over the doorways hung vines dropping their grapes, and birds flew out at the open windows. They climbed a hill behind the town, and saw how the sea surrounded them. The land on which they stood was no promontory, but an island, separated by a foaming interval of water from the shore, which they now saw, not distant, but inaccessible.
Then these miserable ones clung to each other on the summit of the rock, gazing, until they were fully persuaded of their misfortune. The winds waved and fluttered their garments, the waters uttered a voice breaking on the rocky shore, and rose mute upon the farther coast. The rain now began to fall from a morning cloud, and the travellers, for the first time, found shelter under a foreign roof.
All day they watched the sails approaching the headlands, or veering widely away and beating towards unseen harbors, as when a bird driven by fear abandons its nest, but drawn by love returns and hovers around it. Four days and nigh