ghtning of phosphor in the creaming heads of
the ebon surges, and my sick imagination twisted that pallid complexion
into the dim reflection of the lamps of illuminated pavilions at the
bottom of the sea; mystic palaces of green marble, radiant cities in the
measureless kingdoms of the ocean gods. I had a fancy of roofs of pearl
below, turrets of milk-white coral, pavements of rainbow lustre like to
the shootings and dartings of the hues of shells inclined and trembled
to the sun. I thought I could behold the movements of shapes as
indeterminable as the forms which swarm in dreams, human brows crowned
with gold, the cold round emerald eyes of fish, the creamy breasts of
women, large outlines slowly floating upwards, making a deeper blackness
upon the blackness like the dye of the electric storm upon the velvet
bosom of midnight. Often would I shrink from side to side, starting from
a fancied apparition leaping into terrible being out of some hurling
block of liquid obscurity.

Once a light shone upon the masthead. At any other time I should have
known this to be a St. Elmo's fire, a corposant, the ignis fatuus of the
deep, and hailed it with a seaman's faith in its promise of gentle
weather. But to my distempered fancy it was a lanthorn hung up by a
spirit hand; I traced the dusky curve of an arm and observed the busy
twitching of visionary fingers by the rays of the ghostly light; the
outline of a large face of a bland and sorrowful expression, pallid as
any foam-flake whirling past, came into the sphere of those graveyard
rays. I shrieked and shut my eyes, and when I looked again the light was
gone.

Long before daybreak I was exhausted. Mercifully, the wind was scant;
the stars shone very gloriously; on high sparkled the Cross of the
southern world. A benign influence seemed to steal into me out of its
silver shining; the craze fell from me, and I wept.

Shortly afterwards, worn out by three days and nights of suffering, I
fell into a deep sleep, and when I awoke my eyes opened right upon the
blinding sun.

This was the morning of the fourth day. I was without a watch. By the
height of the sun I reckoned the hour to be ten. I threw a languid
glance at the compass and found the boat's head pointing north-west; she
fell off and came to, being without governance, and was scarcely sailing
therefore. The wind was west, a very light breeze, just enough to put a
bright twinkling into the long, smooth folds of the wide a