hurches, and about the state and the country at large, and about
those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual program,
you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about
something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he
outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff!
up the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water?
Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!"

"Petroleum, captain?"

"Yes, sir, the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You
read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't tough
when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There ain't a
thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go prayerfully
to work and cipher out how 'twas done."

At eight o'clock on the third morning out from New York, land was
sighted. Away across the sunny waves one saw a faint dark stripe
stretched along under the horizon-or pretended to see it, for the credit
of his eyesight. Even the Reverend said he saw it, a thing which was
manifestly not so. But I never have seen any one who was morally strong
enough to confess that he could not see land when others claimed that
they could.

By and by the Bermuda Islands were easily visible. The principal one
lay upon the water in the distance, a long, dull-colored body; scalloped
with slight hills and valleys. We could not go straight at it, but had
to travel all the way around it, sixteen miles from shore, because it is
fenced with an invisible coral reef. At last we sighted buoys, bobbing
here and there, and then we glided into a narrow channel among them,
"raised the reef," and came upon shoaling blue water that soon further
shoaled into pale green, with a surface scarcely rippled. Now came the
resurrection hour; the berths gave up their dead. Who are these pale
specters in plug-hats and silken flounces that file up the companionway
in melancholy procession and step upon the deck? These are they which
took the infallible preventive of seasickness in New York harbor and
then disappeared and were forgotten. Also there came two or three faces
not seen before until this moment. One's impulse is to ask, "Where did
you come aboard?"

We followed the narrow channel a long time, with land on both sides--low
hills that might have been green and grassy, but had a faded look
instead. However, the land-locked water was lovely, at any rate, wi