"The names of these pretty runaways were Robert Machin and Anne
d'Arfet, wife of a sour merchant of Bristol; and all their care was
to flee together and lose all the world for love. But they never
reached France; for having run prosperously down Channel and across
from the Land's End until they sighted Ushant, they met a
north-easterly gale which blew them off the coast; a gale so blind
and terrible and persistent that for twelve days they ran before it,
in peril of death. On the thirteenth day they sighted an island,
where, having found (as they thought) good anchorage, they brought
the ship to, and rowed the lady ashore through the surf.
Between suffering and terror she was already close upon death.
"Now this man Prince said that 'though the seamen laid their peril at
her door, holding the monstrous storm to be a judgment direct from
Heaven upon her sin, yet not one of them, considering her childish
beauty, had the heart to throw her an ill word or so much as an
accusing look: but having borne her ashore they built a tabernacle of
boughs and roofed it with a spare sail for her and for her lover, who
watched beside her till she died.
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