William Shakespeare: The Tempest

ACT 1 2. SCENE II. The Island. Before the cell of PROSPERO (continued)

PROSPERO.
My brave spirit!
Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil
Would not infect his reason?

ARIEL.
Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd
Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners
Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,
Then all afire with me: the King's son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring--then like reeds, not hair--
Was the first man that leapt; cried 'Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.'

PROSPERO.
Why, that's my spirit!
But was not this nigh shore?

ARIEL.
Close by, my master.

PROSPERO.
But are they, Ariel, safe?

ARIEL.
Not a hair perish'd;
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and, as thou bad'st me,
In troops I have dispers'd them 'bout the isle.
The king's son have I landed by himself,
Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs
In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,
His arms in this sad knot.

PROSPERO.
Of the King's ship
The mariners, say how thou hast dispos'd,
And all the rest o' th' fleet?

ARIEL.
Safely in harbour
Is the King's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vex'd Bermoothes; there she's hid:
The mariners all under hatches stowed;
Who, with a charm join'd to their suff'red labour,
I have left asleep: and for the rest o' th' fleet
Which I dispers'd, they all have met again,
And are upon the Mediterranean flote
Bound sadly home for Naples,
Supposing that they saw the king's ship wrack'd,
And his great person perish.

PROSPERO.
Ariel, thy charge
Exactly is perform'd; but there's more work:
What is the time o' th' day?

ARIEL.
Past the mid season.

PROSPERO.
At least two glasses. The time 'twixt six and now
Must by us both be spent most preciously.