here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along
their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are
villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,--
dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,--finally vanish. Then
the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a
dream of mountains;--it turns at last gray as smoke, and then
melts into the horizon-light like a mirage.

Another yellow sunset, made weird by extraordinary black, dense,
fantastic shapes of cloud. Night darkens, , and again the
Southern Cross glimmers before our prow, and the two Milky Ways
reveal themselves,--that of the Cosmos and that ghostlier one
which stretches over the black deep behind us. This alternately
broadens and narrows at regular intervals, concomitantly with the
rhythmical swing of the steamer, Before us the bows spout: fire;
behind us there is a flaming and roaring as of Phlegethon; and
the voices of wind and sea become so loud that we cannot talk to
one another,--cannot make our words heard even by shouting.



IX.


Early morning: the eighth day. Moored in another blue harbor,--
a great semicircular basin, bounded by a high billowing of hills
all green from the fringe of yellow beach up to their loftiest
clouded summit. The land has that up-tossed look which tells a
volcanic origin. There are curiously scalloped heights, which,
though emerald from base to crest, still retain all the