It was a fine day on which Anneus the fisherman went down to the shore to mend his fishing nets, on the eastern side of the island. But though the sun beat down with all the warmth of spring, and a cool breeze blew gently on the green and shady slopes of the mainland, the surrounding seas were whipped up in a frenzy, as if Poseidon himself were churning their depths with his trident, and but a little way out from the shore the waves were high and choppy, and the clear sky dissolved into dark clouds just as suddenly as the white sands yielded to sea water.

That was why Anneus was mending nets and not taking his little fishing boat out on the waves. Even as he gazed out contentedly, however - leaning back against the side of his boat and whistling tunelessly to himself - he spotted something strange; stranger, even, than the restless seas. There were two youths just a short way from the shore, clinging to a piece of flotsam that was battered this way and that by the cruel tides.

Anneus let the coarse weave fall from his calloused fingers as he watched the little raft and its passengers pitching and tossing about, his old bearded face open-mouthed in alarm. Before he could so much as stumble to his feet, however, the two youths and their ragged vessel were swept up by one almighty wave and hurled ashore as surely as if some hand of a god had done it. There they lay amid the shattered wood and tangled weeds, unmoving and seemingly unconscious.

At last, released from his spell of stunned silence, Anneus staggered upright and sped down the shore towards them as fast as his aching limbs could carry him.

"Ho there!" he called in his gruff voice, hardly expecting a response and indeed receiving none. The two youths were pale as a pair of corpses and stretched out just as lifelessly. That was not what first arrested the fisherman's eye, however. 

"Why, there's one here so beautiful I can scarce tell whether it be a man or a maiden - such graceful features, and the rosy skin of untarnished youth, without even a hint of down on those cheeks. I took them to be lovers at first sight, man and woman, but now I see the strong and sculpted limbs, the narrow hips and square shoulders of an athlete, I hardly know what to make of it... 

"And here's the other one, just as handsome in his way, fair-haired, and less ambiguous than his fellow. But lo, he stirs!"

The second youth had just heaved up a deep groan and rolled onto his front, still tangled in the weeds and weighed down by his wet clothes. 

"Ho there, sir! Stay with us!" the fisherman called in a brusque but kindly voice. The youth's eyelids flickered and opened. He gaze up into empty heaven, seeming not to perceive it, until the fisherman bent down and slapped him about the face gently. Then the lad vomited up a stomachful of seawater, doubling up and coughing violently. 

"Pelleus," he murmured, once he had stopped coughing.

"Is that your name, lad?"

He shook his head, gesturing to his side with one hand.

"Your friend, then?"

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He nodded.

The fisherman turned his attentions to the androgynous youth, who was still and silent as the dead.

"Here, help me roll - ah - him over," he said, with an awkward pause.

They turned Pelleus about and set him on all fours, drawing his long hair out of his face. With a thump on the back the fisherman forced up the seawater from Pelleus' lungs, and soon he was spluttering and gasping for air just as his friend had done. 

"Marinus!" he cried, clapping eyes on his comrade. They embraced like long-lost brothers, and Anneus left them to their private for a moment while he went to fetch a dry cloak from his boat, further up the shore. 

He returned to find them laughing merrily at something or other, though they stopped upon seeing the fisherman.

"We owe you our lives, good sir," Marinus, the fair-haired one said. 

"It is nothing," Anneus blushed.

"Not to us it isn't," Pelleus said, smiling, and his voice was high and unbroken as a boy's. 

"Yes, how can we repay the debt, sir?" Marinus went on.

"Well, if it please you, I am mighty curious about how you two found yourselves in such a state. If you will answer me that I shall consider us even," Anneus said bashfully.

"A small price to pay for saving our lives!" Marinus said, eager to oblige him. "Though I cannot vouch for my friend's part of the tale. You see, I found him floating on an old wreck, already half drowned when I myself was set adrift! We washed up here together."

*Strange fortune!* thought the fisherman.

"Aye, the coast of Arcadia is perilous indeed; many a ship has been wrecked off our shores, which accounts for our safety and seclusion from invaders," he said aloud. The two youths looked at one another with wonder in their eyes.

"Arcadia! So we have come there, to the land of plenty?" Pelleus remarked in amazement, speaking their common thought.

"It is a fair land, and plentiful as you say, but not as miraculous as rumour tells," Anneus said modestly. "But enough of that, you were telling me your story."

He looked at Marinus with the shrewd eyes of a man who will not be cheated out of his payment.

"So I was," Marinus replied, and he cleared his throat. 

Already the sun was drying out his sodden clothes, and the tide had receded a little way out so that they now basked on dry white sand. Pelleus had the fisherman's cloak wrapped around his shoulders, and shivered only a little as they listened to Marinus' tale. Anneus had entirely forgotten about his nets by now, and sat at their feet in rapt attention.