ABSTRACT
Pericles, Prince of Yyre that there was the beginning of his ruine, intreating them to bend their course as neere unto it as they could: telling, how that smoake was but a small relique of a great fire, which had driven both him & his friend rather to committe themselves to the cold mercie of the sea, then to abide the hote crueltie of the fire: and that therefore, though they both had abandoned the ship, that he was (if any where) in that course to be met withall. They steared therefore as neere thetherward as they could: but when they came so neere as their eies were ful masters of the object, they saw a sight full of piteous strangenes: a ship, or rather the carkas of the shippe, or rather some few bones of the carkas, hulling there, part broken, part burned, part drowned: death having used more then one dart to that destruction. About it Hoted great store of very rich thinges, and many chestes which might promise no lesse. And amidst the precious things were a number of dead bodies, which likewise did not onely testifie both elements violence, but that the chiefe violence was growen of humane inhumanitie: for their bodies were ful of grisly wounds, & their bloud had (as it were) filled the wrinckles of the seas visage: which it seemed the sea woulde not wash away, that it might witnes it is not alwaies his fault, when we condemne his crueltie: in summe, a defeate, where the conquered kept both field and spoile: a shipwrack without storme or ill footing: and a wast of fire in the midst of water.
