hers, turned to me, and, forgetting my foreign
ways, exclaimed, in a tone of enthusiastic delight,

"We are destroyed! Death is near! Rejoice!"

Accustomed as I was to the perils of the sea, I had learned to face
death without flinching. Almah, too, was calm, for to her this death
seemed preferable to that darker fate which awaited us; but the words
of the Kohen jarred upon my feelings.

"Do you not intend to do anything to save the ship?" I asked.

He laughed joyously.

"There's no occasion," said he. "When the oars are taken in we always
begin to rejoice. And why not? Death is near--it is almost certain.
Why should we do anything to distract our minds and mar our joy? For
oh, dear friend, the glorious time has come when we can give up
life--life, with all its toils, its burdens, its endless bitternesses,
its perpetual evils. Now we shall have no more suffering from
vexatious and oppressive riches, from troublesome honors, from a
surplus of food, from luxuries and delicacies, and all the ills of
life."

"But what is the use of being born at all?" I asked, in a wonder that
never ceased to rise at every fresh display of Kosekin feeling.

"The use?" said the Kohen. "Why, if we were not born, how could we
know the bliss of dying, or enjoy the sweetness of death? Death is the
end of being--the one sweet hope and crown and glory of life, the one
desire and hope of every living man. The blessing is denied to none.
Rejoice with me, oh Atam-or! you will soon know its blessedness as
well as I."

He turned away. I held Almah in my arms, and we watched the storm by
the lightning-flashes and waited for the end. But the end came not.
The galley was light, broad, and buoyant as a life-boat; at the same
time it was so strongly constructed that there was scarcely any twist
or contortion in the sinewy fabric. So we floated buoyantly and safely
upon the summit of vast waves, and a storm that would have destroyed
a ship of the European fashion scarcely injured this in the slightest
degree. It was an indestructible as a raft and as buoyant as a bubble;
so we rode out the gale, and the death which the Kosekin invoked did
not come at all.

The storm was but short-lived; the clouds dispersed, and soon went
scudding over the sky; the sea went down. The rowers had to take their
oars once more, and the reaction that followed upon their recent
rejoicing was visible in universal gloom and dejection. As the clouds
dispersed the aurora l