when it moved at last, he saw by its resemblance to the painted pictures
he had seen that it must be Judas Iscariot, who had died five centuries
before. Then as the boat floated near the iceberg, Judas spoke and told
him his tale. After he had betrayed Jesus Christ, after he had died, and
had been consigned to the flames of hell,--which were believed in very
literally in those days,--an angel came to him on Christmas night and said
that he might go thence and cool himself for an hour. "Why this mercy?"
asked Judas Iscariot. Then the angel said to him, "Remember the leper in
Joppa," and poor Judas recalled how once when the hot wind, called the
sirocco, swept through the streets of Joppa, and he saw a naked leper by
the wayside, sitting in agony from the heat and the drifting sand, Judas
had thrown his cloak over him for a shelter and received his thanks. In
reward for this, the angel now told him, he was to have, once a year, an
hour's respite from his pain; he was allowed in that hour to fling himself
on an iceberg and cool his burning heat as he drifted through the northern
seas. Then St. Brandan bent his head in prayer; and when he looked up, the
hour was passed, and Judas had been hurried back into his torments.

It seems to have been only after seven years of this wandering that they
at last penetrated within the obscure fogs which surrounded the Isle of
the Saints, and came upon a shore which lay all bathed in sunny light. It
was a vast island, sprinkled with precious stones, and covered with ripe
fruits; they traversed it for forty days without arriving at the end,
though they reached a great river which flowed through the midst of it
from east to west. There an angel appeared to them, and told them that
they could go no farther, but could return to their own abode, carrying
from the island some of those fruits and precious stones which were
reserved to be distributed among the saints when all the world should be
brought to the true faith. In order to hasten that time, it appears that
St. Malo, the youngest of the sea-faring monks, had wished, in his zeal,