Thy Soul To Keep, part 17. Epilogue

Act V, Scene 1. Night. Another part of the forest.

Enter DRAGANTE with a bottle in his hand. A noise of thunder heard.

DRAGANTE

All the terrors that the purple sun shucks up
From bogs, fens, forests, on fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me
And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin-spike'd, pitch me i' the mire,

Enter BORTAGNO.

Lo, now, lo!
Here comes a spirit of An'sec's, and to torment me
For bringing grave-sand away. I'll fall flat;
Perchance he will not mind me.

BORTAGNO

What have we here? an orruk or a fish? dead or alive?
A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell;
a kind of not of the newest Poor-John. A strange fish!

Thunder

Alas, the storm is come again! my best way is to
creep under this tree; there is no other
shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a man with
strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the
dregs of the storm be past.

DRAGANTE

Do not torment me, prithee; I'll bring my grave-sand home faster.

BORTAGNO

It is Dragante! I took him to be killed with a thunder-stroke.
But art thou not drowned, Dragante?
I hope now thou art not drowned. Is the storm overblown?
I hid me under the dead moon's gaberdine
for fear of the storm. And art thou living, Dragante?
O Dragante, two Rotmoons 'scaped!

DRAGANTE

How didst thou 'scape? How camest thou hither?
swear by this bottle how thou camest hither. I
escaped upon a butt of sack which the sailors
heaved o'erboard, by this bottle; which I made of
the bark of a tree with mine own hands since I was
cast aground.

They drink.

BORTAGNO

I'll swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject;
for the liquor is not earthly.

DRAGANTE

Here; swear then how thou escapedst.

BORTAGNO

I clung to a fish.

DRAGANTE

A howling drunken monster!
A most poor credulous creature. I shall laugh myself to death.

A fish swims by.

By this bad light, this is a very shallow monster!
I afeard of him! A very weak monster! The fish i'
the moon! A most poor credulous monster! Well
drawn, monster, in good sooth! It is but a Glaubfin.

BORTAGNO

No more dams I'll make for fish
Nor fetch in firing
At requiring;
Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish.

DRAGANTE

I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow;
To clustering filberts and sometimes I'll get thee
Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?
If we survived, the others may have also...

Exeunt DRAGANTE and BORTAGNO, singing

The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
The gunner and his mate
Loved Mall, Meg and Marian and Margery,
But none of us cared for Kate