but was thickly peopled with what ordinarily passes as the invisible, but
which now, plainly to behold, basked and revelled in the blaze--products
of the sun. Among the grains of sand and flakes of mica furtive
bubblings, burrowings, and upheavals betrayed a benighted folk to whom
the water was as a firmament into which they might not venture to ascend.

Sought out by the sun, translucent fish revealed their presence by
spectral shadows on the sand, and, traced by the shadows, became
discernible, though but little the more substantial.

This peace-lulled, beguiling, sea, teeming with myriad forms scintillating
on the verge of nothingness--obscure, elusive, yet mighty in their wayward
way--soothed with never so gentle, so dulcet a swaying. This
smooth-bosomed nurse was pleased to fondle to drowsiness a loving mortal
responsive to the blissfulness of enchantment. Warm, comforting,
stainless, she swathed me with rose-leaf softness while whispering
a lullaby of sighs. Her salty caresses lingered on my lips, as I
gazed dreamily intent upon determining the non-existing skyline.
Yet, with no demarcation of the allied elements this rimless, flickering
moon, to what narrow zone, I pondered, is man restricted! He swims
feebly; if he but immerse his lips below the shining surface for a space
to be measured by seconds, he becomes carrion. On the mountain-tops he is
deadly sick. Thus musing, the sorcery of the sea became invincible. My
thoughts drifted, until I dozed, and dozing dreamt--a vague,
incomprehensible dream of floating, in some purer ether, some diviner air
than ever belonged to wormy earth, and woke to realities and a skate--a
little friendly skate which had snoodled beside me, its transparent
shovel-snout half buried in the sand. Immune from the opiate of the sea,
though motionless, with wide, watery-yellow eyes, it gazed upon me as a
fascinated child might upon a strange shape monstrous though benign, and