second highest displays the most symmetrical crater-form I have
yet seen. All are still grayish-blue or gray. Gradually through
the blues break long high gleams of green.

As we steam closer, the island becomes all verdant from flood to
sky; the great dead crater shows its immense wreath of perennial
green. On the lower slopes little settlements are sprinkled in
white, red, and brown: houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high
chimneys are distinguishable;--cane-plantations unfold gold-
green surfaces.

We pass away. The island does not seem to sink behind us, but
to become a ghost. All its outlines grow shadowy. For a little
while it continues green;--but it is a hazy, spectral green, as
of colored vapor. The sea today looks almost black: the south-
west wind has filled the day with luminous mist; and the phantom
of Nevis melts in the vast glow, dissolves utterly.... Once more
we are out of sight of land,--in the centre of a blue-black
circle of sea. The water-line cuts blackly against the immense
light of the horizon,--a huge white glory that flames up very
high before it fades and melts into the eternal blue.



X.


Then a high white shape like a cloud appears before us,--on the
purplish-dark edge of the sea. The cloud-shape enlarges,
heightens without changing contour. It is not a cloud, but an