Page 1035 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

That hour destroy us?

PROSPERO
Well demanded, wench:
My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not, [140]
So dear the love my people bore me; nor set
A mark so bloody on the business; but

With colours fairer painted their foul ends.
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared [145]

A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigg’d,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it: there they hoist us,
To cry to th’ sea that roar’d to us; to sigh
To th’ winds, whose pity, sighing back again, [150]

Did us but loving wrong.

MIRANDA
Alack, what trouble
Was I then to you!

PROSPERO
O, a cherubin

Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile,
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have deck’d the sea with drops full salt, [155]
Under my burthen groan’d; which rais’d in me
An undergoing stomach, to bear up

Against what should ensue.

MIRANDA
How came we ashore?

PROSPERO
By Providence divine.
Some food we had, and some fresh water, that [160]

A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,