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He told of the yellow-haired Siren, who would sing to lure sailors to her rock because she was bored by the society of the Merman, her husband; how some fisherman one night caught her in a net, and, because she was beautiful, would not give her back to the Merman, though he begged and prayed, offering a rich bribe of pearls and coral; how the Merman swam away at last, cursing the fishermen and their country, vowing never to rest till he and his brothers, with their own hands, had brought enough sand to choke all the city ports.

Each time that he quitted the siren, the chain that bound him was drawn more tightly around him. At each visit he drank deep draughts of the philtre, that was poisoning the fountains of his life. Again and again he had made a violent struggle to throw off the enchantment and be free.

Although it was falling it seemed to them to be rushing up the sky, and over the roof-spaces of the city below its shadow leapt towards them. They heard the whistling rush of the air about it and its yelling siren, shrill and swelling, to warn those who were on its landing-stage of its arrival.

Furthermore, he extols the precision and accuracy of her execution and intonation, and the thrilling quality of her voice. Brydone, who appears to have been fascinated with this siren, has an amusing apology for her carelessness of her duties in England, which he insists was not caprice, but inability to sing.

Far away on the horizon lay the blue streak to which Hope points a finger in storm and stress; and a siren voice sounded in their ears, calling, "Come, spread your wings; through that streak of gold or silver or azure lies the sure way of escape from evil fortune!" This youth introduced a stranger, who saluted the friends politely, and spoke to David.

"It never will be settled if he can help it," said public Echo, "as long as there are two fine young women there, and one of them so fascinating over men!" Indeed, Duff Salter received letters, anonymous, of course the anonymous letter was then the suburban press admonishing him to beware of his siren hostess. "She has ruined two men," said the elegant female handwriting before observed.

All their passionate love of the body, all their lawlessness, all the joy of liberty and of life, of the barbaric life that is liberty, all their wandering in the great spaces of the sun, were set before them in Larbi's fluttering tune, that was like the call of a siren, the call of danger, the call of earth and of earthly things, summoning them to abandon the summons of the spirit.

The royal nature of the lion is a commonplace: Jonson and Spenser speak of the sweet breath of the panther. Drayton, in his "Heroical Epistles," quotes the siren and the hyena as examples: "To call for aid, and then to lie in wait, So the hyena murthers by deceit, By sweet enticement sudden death to bring, So from the rocks th' alluring mermaids sing."

Now, as I approached Assuan, I seemed at last to be also approaching the real, the intense Africa that I had known in the Sahara, the enigmatic siren, savage and strange and wonderful, whom the typical Ouled Nail, crowned with gold, and tufted with ostrich plumes, painted with kohl, tattooed, and perfumed, hung with golden coins and amulets, and framed in plaits of coarse, false hair, represents indifferently to the eyes of the travelling stranger.

There isn't any boat, good or bad, that can stand it when a lodestone as big as Gibraltar begins to draw iron!" The second, whose element was melancholy, sighed, "I've been north of Ireland, Pedro, and that was bad enough! The lookout saw a siren and the Infanta Isabella was dashed on the rocks and something laughed at us all night!"