Some tricks of desperation: All, but mariners, Plunged in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel, Then all a-fire with me: the king's son, Ferdinand, With hair up-starting, (then like reeds, not hair,) Was the first man that leaped; cried, Hell is empty, And all the devils are here.

Pro.

But was not this nigh shore?
Ari.

Why, that's my spirit!

Close by, my master.

Pro. But are they, Ariel, safe?
Ari.

Not a hair perished;

On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and as thou bad'st me,
In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle:
The king's son have I landed by himself;
Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs,
In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,
His arms in this sad knot.

Pro.

Of the king's ship, The mariners, say, how thou hast disposed, And all the rest o' the fleet.

Ari.

Safely in harbor

Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'st me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vexed Bermoothes,' there she's hid;
The mariners all under hatches stowed;

Whom, with a charm joined to their suffered labor,
I have left asleep and for the rest o' the fleet,
Which I dispersed, they all have met again;
And are upon the Mediterranean flote,2
Bound sadly home for Naples;

Supposing that they saw the king's ship wrecked,
And his great person perish.

Pro.

Ariel, thy charge

1 The epithet here applied to the Bermudas will be best understood by those who have seen the chafing of the sea over the rugged rocks by which they are surrounded, and which renders access to them so difficult. It was then the current opinion that Bermudas was inhabited by monsters and devils. Setebos, the god of Caliban's dam, was an American devil, worshipped by the giants of Patagonia.

2 Waves, or the sea. Flot, Fr.

Exactly is performed; but there's more work:
What is the time o' the day?

Ari.

Past the mid season.

Pro. At least two glasses: the time 'twixt six and

now

Must by us both be spent most preciously.

Ari. Is there more toil? since thou must give me

pains,

Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,
Which is not yet performed me.

Pro.

What is't thou can'st demand?

Ari.

How now! moody?

My liberty.

Pro. Before the time be out? no more.
Ari.

I

pray thee

Remember, I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, served
Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise
To bate me a full year.

Pro.

Dost thou forget

No.

From what a torment I did free thee?

Ari.

Pro. Thou dost; and think'st it much, to tread the

ooze

Of the salt deep ;

To run upon the sharp wind of the north;

To do me business in the veins o' the earth,
When it is baked with frost.

Ari.

I do not, sir.

Pro. Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot The foul witch, Sycorax, who, with age and envy,

Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her?

Ari. No, sir.

Pro.

Thou hast where was she born? speak; tell me.

Ari. Sir, in Argier.'

Pro.

O, was she so? I must,

Once in a month, recount what thou hast been,

1 The old English name of Algiers.

Which thou forget'st. This damned witch, Sycorax, For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible

To enter human hearing, from Argier,

Thou know'st, was banished; for one thing she did,
They would not take her life: Is not this true?
Ari. Ay, sir.

Pro. This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child,

And here was left by the sailors: Thou, my slave,
As thou report'st thyself, was then her servant:
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate

To act her earthy and abhorred commands,
Refusing her grand hests,' she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers,
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprisoned, thou didst painfully remain

A dozen years; within which space she died,

And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy

groans,

As fast as mill-wheels strike: Then was this island, (Save for the son that she did litter here,

A freckled whelp, hag-born) not honored with
A human shape.

Ari.

Yes; Caliban her son.

Pro. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban,
Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st
What torment I did find thee in: thy groans
Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts
ever-angry bears it was a torment

Of

To lay upon the damned, which Sycorax
Could not again undo; it was mine art,
When I arrived, and heard thee, that made gape
The pine, and let thee out.

Ari.

I thank thee, master.

Pro. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak, And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till

Thou hast howled away twelve winters.

1 Behests, commands.

Ari.

I will be correspondent to command,
And do my sprighting gently.

Pro.

I will discharge thee.

Ari.

Pardon, master.

Do so; and after two days

That's my noble master!

What shall I do? say what? what shall I do?

Pro. Go, make thyself like a nymph o' the sea; be

subject

To no sight but thine and mine; invisible

To every eyeball else. Go, take this shape,
And hither come in't: go hence, with diligence.

[Exit ARIEL. Awake, dear heart, awake! thou hast slept well; Awake!

Mira. The strangeness of your story put Heaviness in me.

Pro.

We'll visit Caliban, my slave, who never

Yields us kind answer.

Mira.

Shake it off: Come on;

'Tis a villain, sir,

But, as 'tis,

I do not love to look on.

Pro.

We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood; and serves in offices
That profit us. What ho! slave! Caliban!
Thou earth, thou! speak.

Cal. [Within.] There's wood enough within.
Pro. Come forth, I say; there's other business
for thee:

Come forth, thou tortoise! when?

Re-enter ARIEL, like a Water-nymph.

Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel,

Hark in thine ear.

Ari.

My lord, it shall be done. [Exit.

1 We cannot do without him.

2 A common expression of impatience.

3 Brisk, spruce, dexterous, from the French cointe.

Pro. Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!

Enter CALIBAN.

Cal. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen,
Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye,

And blister you all o'er!

Pro. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have

cramps,

Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins1
Shall, for that vast2 of night that they may work
All exercise on thee: thou shalt be pinched

As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made them.

Cal.

I must eat my dinner.

When thou camest first,

This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou tak'st from me.

Thou strok'dst me, and mad'st much of me; wouldst

give me

Water with berries in't; and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee,

And showed thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place, and fertile ;
Cursed be I that did so!-All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,

Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest of the island.

Pro.

Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used

thee,

1 Urchins were fairies of a particular class. Hedgehogs were also called urchins; and it is probable that the sprites were so named, because they were of a mischievous kind, the urchin being anciently deemed a very noxious animal.

2 That vast of night is that space of night. So, in Hamlet:

"In the dead waste and middle of the night."