l as to please himself with a leisurely
observation of the coming boat, stepping over into the mizzen-chains, he
clambered his way into the starboard quarter-gallery--one of
those abandoned Venetian-looking water-balconies previously
mentioned--retreats cut off from the deck. As his foot pressed the
half-damp, half-dry sea-mosses matting the place, and a chance phantom
cats-paw--an islet of breeze, unheralded unfollowed--as this ghostly
cats-paw came fanning his cheek; as his glance fell upon the row of
small, round dead-lights--all closed like coppered eyes of the
coffined--and the state-cabin door, once connecting with the gallery,
even as the dead-lights had once looked out upon it, but now calked fast
like a sarcophagus lid; and to a purple-black tarred-over, panel,
threshold, and post; and he bethought him of the time, when that
state-cabin and this state-balcony had heard the voices of the Spanish
king's officers, and the forms of the Lima viceroy's daughters had
perhaps leaned where he stood--as these and other images flitted
through his mind, as the cats-paw through the calm, gradually he felt
rising a dreamy inquietude, like that of one who alone on the prairie
feels unrest from the repose of the noon.

He leaned against the carved balustrade, again looking off toward his
boat; but found his eye falling upon the ribbon grass, trailing along
the ship's water-line, straight as a border of green box; and parterres
of sea-weed, broad ovals and crescents, floating nigh and far, with what
seemed long formal alleys between, crossing the terraces of swells, and
sweeping round as if leading to the grottoes below. And overhanging all
was the balustrade by his arm, which, partly stained with pitch and
partly embossed with moss, seemed the charred ruin of some summer-house
in a grand garden long running to waste.

Trying to break one charm, he was but becharmed anew. Though upon the
wide sea, he seemed in some far inland country; prisoner in some
deserted chateau, left to stare at empty grounds, and peer out at vague
roads, where never wagon or wayfarer passed.

But these enchantments were a little disenchanted as his eye fell on the
corroded main-chains. Of an ancient style, massy and rusty in link,
shackle and bolt, they seemed even more fit for the ship's present
business than the one for which she had been built.

Presently he thought something moved nigh the chains. He rubbed his
eyes, and looked hard. Groves of r