came from a quarter whence steamers may not venture, and was I not the
only whistler within a range of many miles? No steamer ever gloated or
warned or appealed in so fluty a note--plaintive, slightly tremulous,
nervously imploring.

Alert, I tracked the strange sound along an eccentric course to its
haunt, finding nothing more than the empty shell of a huge sea urchin,
which in accord with a whim of the sea had floated and was now held aloft
slantwise to the lips of the wind, firm in the branching tines of
stag's-horn coral. A rustic pipe--giving forth a sonorous moan, now
cooing and crooning, now bold and confident, and again irresolute and
unschooled. Not too sure of instrumentalism, oft the note was hesitating,
soliciting a compliant ear as became a modest wooer of the muses,
polishing his unceremonious serenade to some, shy mermaid, or hooting at
shyer silence.

A new art, a rare accomplishment! So the musician was diffident,
half-ashamed, half-shocked at his audacity, wholly self-conscious;
earnest to please yet doubtful of the reception awaiting his untutored,
artless play. Gathering courage, the breeze moistened his lips and a
triumphant spasm of sound boomed out, and again the tremulous undertone
prevailed. It was more than a serenade--a primitive sensation from
primitive matter--a vital function, for as long, as the wind blew and
until the lapping sea gurgled in its throat and its note ceased with the
bursting of a bubble, there, held fixedly by living coral, the dead shell
could not choose but whistle. So I left it to its wayward pipings, happy
to have been the sole auditor to a purely natural, albeit mechanical,
monotone. Upon such an instrument did the heavenly maid beguile the time
when she was yet uncouthly young--at the hoydenish age when men also
cajoled her with clicking sticks and the beating of hollow logs, and