ff the ocean, which caused me to look narrowly
about, with some dim dream of perceiving land, though I should have
known there was no land for leagues and leagues.

Whilst we were munching a biscuit, I observed an appearance of steam
lifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on the
starboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in the
shape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height of
perhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singular
emissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we might
look out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallows
said: "No; that's no mist, mate; that is as good steam as ever blew
out of a kettle. Are there places where the water boils in this here
ocean?"

As he said these words, an extraordinary thrill passed through the
boat, followed by a sound that seemed more like an intellectual
sensation than a real noise. What to compare it to I don't know; it
was as though it had thundered under the sea. An instant later, up
from the part of the water where the corkscrew appearances were, rose
a prodigious body of steam. It soared without a sound from the deep;
it was balloon-shaped but of mountainous proportions.

"A sea-quake!" roared Jackson. "Stand by for the rollers!"

But no sea followed. I could witness no commotion whatever in the
water; the light, long swell flowed placidly into the base of the mass
of whiteness, and there was nothing besides visible on the breast of
the sea, save the delicate wrinkling of the weak draught of air. Very
quickly the vapour thinned as steam does, and as it melted off the
surface, it disclosed to our astonished gaze what at first sight
seemed to me the fabric of a great ship, but after viewing it for a
moment or two, I distinctly made out the form of an old-fashioned hull
with the half of much such another hull as she, alongside, both
apparently locked together about the bows; and they seemed to be
supported by some huge gleaming black platform; but what it was we
could not tell.

The three of us drew a deep breath as we surveyed the floating
objects. The steam was gone; there they lay plain and bare; it was as
though the wand of a magician had touched the white mass and
transformed it into the objects we gazed at.

"Down with the sail," says I, "there's something yonder worth looking
at."

We got the oars over, and pulled in the direction of the fabrics. As
we