Ceyx And Alcione Ll Poem by Morgan Michaels

Alcyone, his daughter, had grown up in her father's house, and watching far to sea had seen the damage wrought by the winds when in bad temper-not that she failed to notice them when calm-she often observed sailboats gliding under the influence of the gentler kinds of winds outside the rocky ring that surrounded the island; but the storms were more spectacular and more devastating than their lamb-like counterparts. She had seen pretty ships spun willy-nilly onto the sharp rocks and smashed to bits, and since life-preservers had not yet been invented, there were only floating timbers for the sailors to grasp, and the chance of seizing one of these was dim. Many a good hand gasped out his life in the over-topping surf, and pulled below, visited the star-strewn sea bottom once and forever, since there was no Red-Cross in those days to teach people to swim. People did not yet realize that by stretching themselves along the sea-surface, inflating their lungs and flailing their arms and legs sequentially, they could keep afloat and reach the distant beach. Nobody bothered to learn-though most people lived on islands, and why they didn't is a mystery. Evidentally, between storms the weather was so good it wasn't necessary, and during the storms unavailing, so high were the waves and so sharp the rocks. Only a merman (or mer-maiden) could navigate them, and no-one land-born was that.
So, she worried...