Spake Arthur then: There will be a fresh play presently, my mates,
but ye sit fast, for meseemeth this show is no more perilous than the
other, though it be bigger.
Scarce were the words out of his mouth, ere there was a stir amongst
the men gathered in the waist, and lo, amidst a knot of big and
fierce mariners, three women standing, pale, with flying hair, and
their hands bound behind them, and one was clad in gold and another
in green and the third in black; and their faces were as the faces of
Aurea and Viridis and Atra.
Then there came forth from that ship a huge cruel roar blent with
mocking laughter that shamed our very hearts, and those evil things
in the form of mariners took hold of each one of the ladies and cast
them overboard into the gulf of the waters, first Aurea, next
Viridis, and then Atra; and we two stood up with our useless swords
brandished and would have leapt over into the deep, but that Arthur
arose also and took hold of an arm of each of us and stayed us, and
said: Nay, then, if ye go, take me with you, and let all the Quest
sink down into the deep, and let our lovelings pine in captivity, and
Birdalone lose all her friends in one swoop, and we be known
hereafter as the fools of lovers, the unstable.
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