A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

For the air was full of the clamorous wailings of the fierce winds whose
joy it is to lash the waves into rage and to strew with dead men and
broken timber the angry, surf-beaten shore.
"My King," she sighed to herself. "My King! my Own!" And through
the weary hours she prayed to the gods to bring him safely back to her,
and many times she offered fragrant incense to Juno, protectress of
women, that she might have pity on a woman whose husband and true
lover was out in the storm, a plaything for ruthless winds and waves.
A helpless plaything was the king of Thessaly. Long ere the dim
evening light had made of the shore of his own land a faint, grey line,
the white-maned horses of Poseidon, king of the seas, began to rear
their heads, and as night fell, a black curtain, blotting out every
landmark, and all home-like things, the East Wind rushed across the
Ægean Sea, smiting the sea-horses into madness, seizing the sails with
cruel grasp and casting them in tatters before it, snapping the mast as
though it were but a dry reed by the river. Before so mighty a tempest
no oars could be of any avail, and for a little time only the winds and
waves gambolled like a half-sated wolf-pack over their helpless prey.
With hungry roar the great weight of black water stove in the deck and
swept the sailors out of the ship to choke them in its icy depths; and
ever it would lift the wounded thing high up on its foaming white crests,
as though to toss it to the dark sky, and ever again would suck it down
into the blackness, while the shrieking winds drove it onward with
howling taunts and mocking laughter. While life stayed in him, Ceyx
thought only of Halcyone. He had no fear, only the fear of the grief his
death must bring to her who loved him as he loved her, his peerless
queen, his Halcyone. His prayers to the gods were prayers for her. For
himself he asked one thing only--that the waves might bear his body to
her sight, so that her gentle hands might lay him in his tomb. With
shout of triumph that they had slain a king, winds and waves seized
him even as he prayed, and the Day Star that was hidden behind the
black pall of the sky knew that his son, a brave king and a faithful lover,
had gone down to the Shades.
When Dawn, the rosy-fingered, had come to Thessaly, Halcyone,