“Sir, in Algiers,” said Ariel.

“O was she so?” said Prospero.  “I must recount what you have been, which I find you do not remember.  This bad witch Sycorax, for her witchcrafts, too terrible to enter human hearing, was banished from Algiers, and here left by the sailors; and because you were a spirit too delicate to execute her wicked commands, she shut you up in a tree, where I found you howling.  This torment, remember, I did free you from.”

“Pardon me, dear master,” said Ariel, ashamed to seem ungrateful; “I will obey your commands.”

“Do so,” said Prospero, “and I will set you free.”  He then gave orders what farther he would have him do, and away went Ariel, first to where he had left Ferdinand, and found him still sitting on the grass in the same melancholy posture.

“O my young gentleman,” said Ariel, when he saw him, “I will soon move you.  You must be brought, I find, for the lady Miranda to have a sight of your pretty person.  Come, sir, follow me.”  He then began singing,

  “Full fathom five thy father lies: 
    Of his bones are coral made;
  Those are pearls that were his eyes: 
    Nothing of him that doth fade,
  But doth suffer a sea-change
  Into something rich and strange. 
  Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: 
  Hark, now I hear them, ding-dong—­bell.”

This strange news of his lost father soon roused the prince from the stupid fit into which he had fallen.  He followed in amazement the sound of Ariel’s voice, till it led him to Prospero and Miranda, who were sitting under the shade of a large tree.  Now Miranda had never seen a man before, except her own father.

“Miranda,” said Prospero, “tell me what you are looking at yonder.”

“O father,” said Miranda, in a strange surprise, “surely that is a spirit.  Lord! how it looks about!  Believe me, sir, it is a beautiful creature.  It is not a spirit?”

“No, girl,” answered her father; “it eats, and sleeps, and has senses such as we have.  This young man you see was in the ship.  He is somewhat altered by grief, or you might call him a handsome person.  He has lost his companions, and is wandering about to find them.”

Miranda, who thought all men had grave faces and grey beards like her father, was delighted with the appearance of this beautiful young prince; and Ferdinand, seeing such a lovely lady in this desert place, and from the strange sounds he had heard expecting nothing but wonders, thought he was upon an inchanted island, and that Miranda was the goddess of the place, and as such he began to address her.