d and spectral: he wondered what prey secured, or what
expectation about to be realised, moved with a joyous thrill this
magnificent network of living fire. From the projections of the vault,
and the angles of the rock, hung lengths of delicate fibrous plants,
bathing their roots probably through the granite in some upper pool of
water, and distilling from their silky ends one after the other, a drop
of water like a pearl. These drops fell in the water now and then with a
gentle splash. The effect of the scene was singular. Nothing more
beautiful could be imagined; nothing more mournful could anywhere be
found.

It was a wondrous palace, in which death sat smiling and content.

XIII

WHAT WAS SEEN THERE; AND WHAT PERCEIVED DIMLY

A place of shade, which yet was dazzling to the eyes--such was this
surprising cavern.

The beating of the sea made itself felt throughout the cavern. The
oscillation without raised and depressed the level of the waters within,
with the regularity of respiration. A mysterious spirit seemed to fill
this great organism, as it swelled and subsided in silence.

The water had a magical transparency, and Gilliatt distinguished at
various depths submerged recesses, and surfaces of jutting rocks ever of
a deeper and a deeper green. Certain dark hollows, too, were there,
probably too deep for soundings.

On each side of the submarine porch, rude elliptical arches, filled with
shallows, indicated the position of small lateral caves, low alcoves of
the central cavern, accessible, perhaps, at certain tides. These
openings had roofs in the form of inclined planes, and at angles more or
less acute. Little sandy beaches of a few feet wide, laid bare by the
action of the water, stretched inward, and were lost in these recesses.

Here and there seaweeds of more than a fathom in length undulated
beneath the water, like the waving of long tresses in the wind; and
there were glimpses of a forest of sea plants.

Above and below the surface of the water, the wall of the cavern from
top to bottom--from the vault down to the depth at which it became
invisible--was tapestried with that prodigious efflorescence of the sea,
rarely perceived by human eyes, which the old Spanish navigators called
_praderias del mar_. A luxuriant moss, having all the tints of the
olive, enlarged and concealed the protuberances of granite. From all the
jutting points swung the thin fluted strips of varech, which sailors use