Aboard which boat she forthwith got, and
being, like most of the women of the island, not altogether without
nautical skill, she rowed some distance out to sea, and then hoisted
sail, and cast away oars and tiller, and let the boat drift, deeming that
a boat without lading or steersman would certainly be either capsized by
the wind or dashed against some rock and broken in pieces, so that escape
she could not, even if she would, but must perforce drown. And so, her
head wrapped in a mantle, she stretched herself weeping on the floor of
the boat. But it fell out quite otherwise than she had conjectured: for,
the wind being from the north, and very equable, with next to no sea, the
boat kept an even keel, and next day about vespers bore her to land hard
by a city called Susa, full a hundred miles beyond Tunis. To the damsel
'twas all one whether she were at sea or ashore, for, since she had been
aboard, she had never once raised, nor, come what might, meant she ever
to raise, her head.
Now it so chanced, that, when the boat grounded, there was on the shore a
poor woman that was in the employ of some fishermen, whose nets she was
just taking out of the sunlight. Seeing the boat under full sail, she
marvelled how it should be suffered to drive ashore, and conjectured that
the fishermen on board were asleep. So to the boat she hied her, and
finding therein only the damsel fast asleep, she called her many times,
and at length awakened her; and perceiving by her dress that she was a
Christian, she asked her in Latin how it was that she was come thither
all alone in the boat.
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