ship, not a cloud overshadowed
it, not a morning breeze came fresh from the sea, or an evening
breeze brought fragrance from the shore, but was thought of in
some relation with her. There was none like her, we said, in the
broad continents to right of us, to left of us, or before us; and
we doubted if there was her like in the lands of enchantment we
had left behind. Her wondrous beauty, the flashing of the jewels
that encrusted her belt, and that seemed to gleam and sparkle all
over her picturesque attire, the haunting look of those great,
lustrous eyes, all the reminiscence of that eventful night,--how
fondly we recurred to them again and again in the forecastle or
the night-watch, and with what pleasure we recognized the first
indications that her trance of terror had passed, and that she
had resumed a living interest in the strange world around her.

First the open window of the cabin gave evidence that the balmy
air and the pleasant shores we skirted were no longer indifferent
to her; then came flitting glimpses of bright garments and brighter
eyes quickly withdrawn from observation into the depths of the
fairy grotto she inhabited; and finally, one beautiful moonlight
evening, while most of the crew were on deck watching the lurid
peak of Etna and the pavement of golden waves stretching toward
it, and listening not to premonitions of Scylla or Charybdis, but
to the song of the nightingales from the dim shore, or to tales
of Enceladus and the Cyclops from Fred, and whimsical comments
from Mike, she came hesitatingly forth, arousing an excitement and
curiosity among us as intense as if she were a ghost arising from
the tomb. Her dress was the same in which she had been brought among
us, without addition of yashmak or veil of any kind,--excepting
the mistiness of the moonlight,--to conceal her face, though there
was a shy drawing down of the tasselled cap or turban she wore,
that shadowed it somewhat.

I need hardly say how soon the glories of earth, sea, and sky,
which we had been contemplating, shrank into mere accessories around
that one central figure, as she stood gazing upon them through the
shrouds and spars from our deck. But, notwithstanding the beauty of
the scene and the hour, she did not hold her position long to enjoy
them. She had, in appearing thus before strange men, evidently by a
great effort, done that which she shrank from doing; but whether
in obedience to her own will or to that of another, w