By and by the Bermuda Islands were easily visible. The principal one lay
upon the water in the distance, a long, dull-colored body; scalloped with
slight hills and valleys. We could not go straight at it, but had to
travel all the way around it, sixteen miles from shore, because it is
fenced with an invisible coral reef. At last we sighted buoys, bobbing
here and there, and then we glided into a narrow channel among them,
"raised the reef," and came upon shoaling blue water that soon further
shoaled into pale green, with a surface scarcely rippled. Now came the
resurrection hour; the berths gave up their dead. Who are these pale
specters in plug-hats and silken flounces that file up the companionway
in melancholy procession and step upon the deck? These are they which
took the infallible preventive of seasickness in New York harbor and then
disappeared and were forgotten. Also there came two or three faces not
seen before until this moment. One's impulse is to ask, "Where did you
come aboard?"

We followed the narrow channel a long time, with land on both sides--low
hills that might have been green and grassy, but had a faded look
instead. However, the land-locked water was lovely, at any rate, with
its glittering belts of blue and green where moderate soundings were, and
its broad splotches of rich brown where the rocks lay near the surface.
Everybody was feeling so well that even the grave, pale young man (who,
by a sort of kindly common consent, had come latterly to be referred to
as "The Ass") received frequent and friendly notice--which was right
enough, for there was no harm in him.

At last we steamed between two island points whose rocky jaws allowed
only just enough room for the vessel's body, and now before us loomed
Hamilton on her clustered hillsides and summits, the whitest mass of