as I raised my hand in salutation wriggled off, less afraid than curious.

Beyond, a shadow--a disc-shaped shadow--drifted with a regular pulsating
motion. Shadowlike, my thoughts, too, drifted, but how remote from the
scene! They transported me to Thisbe--Thisbe who


"Saw the lion's shadow ere himself
And ran dismayed away."


How different the shadow of the moment from that of the king of beasts
which led to the tragedy under the walls of Babylon, where the blood of
the lovers dyed the mulberry red! It is the evidence of a bloodless thing,
a rotund and turreted medusa, the leader of a disorderly procession,
soundless and feeble as becomes beings almost as impalpable as the sea
itself. Shadows of fish exquisitely framed flit and dance. I see naught
but shadows, dim and thin, for I doze and dream again; and so fantastic
time, whose footfalls are beads and bubbles, passes, and grosser affairs
beckon me out of the sunlit sea.

Oh, great and glorious and mighty sun! Oh, commanding, majestical sun!
Superfine invigorator; bold illuminator of the dim spaces of the brain;
originator of the glow! which distils its rarest attars! Am I not thy
true, thy joyful knight? Hast thou not touched my toughened, unflinching
shoulders with the flat of thy burnished sword? Do I not behold its
jewelled hilt flashing with pearls and precious stones as thou sheathest
it for the night among the purple Western hills? Do I not hail its golden
gleams among the fair-barked trees what time each scented morn I milk
my skittish goats?