dank to throw off the black envelope of fog and cloud. The black,
oleaginous water seemed to slope from the muffled oar in a gluey,
shining wave, and the heavy ripple at the bow of their boat parted in
a long, adhesive roll, sloping away, but not breaking into froth or
glisten of electric fire. The air and the sea seemed brooding in a
heavy, hopeless misery, and the strange sense of plundering, not the
living, but the dead, as if the sunken vessel was a huge coffin, was
upon them. With that cautious sense of superstitious dread choking
their muttered whispers, they reached the spot and prepared to
descend. The task of sinking through that pitchy consistence, into the
intricacy of that black, coffin-like hold, among the drowned corpses,
to do a deed of doubtful right, must have intensified the horror of
great darkness and that sublimity of silence that in the under-sea
peoples the void shadows with horrible existences and fills the
concave with voices. But it was done; and with trembling eagerness the
weighty ingots, the unalloyed bars, were safely shipped, loading down
the boat. Then louder and louder came the dash of oars. For a few
moments they felt the way with muffled stroke into the shrouding
shadows. But practiced ears caught the softened roll in the rollocks,
and keen eyes marked the shadowy boat in the deepening gloom. It must
be the skilled oar and adroit steering that saves them now, but
not far away lie the long shadows of the shelving coast and its
black-bearded forest. The swing of the oars became bold, open and
exciting, and angry challenges passed. But the burden of the heavy
gold fought against them, like the giant's harp calling Master!
Master! on the shoulders of flying Jack of the Bean-stalk. The light,
trim craft of the pursuers edged upon them, and the shadow of an angry
struggle in the pitchy, reeking night gloomed over them. "No, no,"
said the leader: "no bloodshed for the cursed stuff! Here, give me a
lift;" and with a heave and plunge the massy rouleaux splashed into