to the
pools of her fancy, and viewing the submerged city with its princes and
its populace transformed to fish, when, having entered the heart-shaped
inclosure, she leaned over the boat-side and noted the twin tides of
life whose facile and luminous career followed all the outline of the
weir. For the mackerel, swimming in at the two eddies of the mouth,
struck straight across in transverse courses till they met the barrier
on either side, and then each slowly felt the way along to the end of
the lobe, where, instead of escaping, they struck freely across again,
and thus pursued their round in everlasting interchase of
lustre,--through the darkly transparent surface each current glancing on
its swift and silent way, an arrow of emerald and silver. Curving,
racing, rippling with tints, they circled, till, warned by some subtile
instinct that the river was betraying them, fresh fear swept faster and
faster their lines of light, the rich dyes deepened in the splendid
scales, and some huddled into herds, and some, more frantic than the
rest, leaped from the water in shining streaks, and darted away like
stars into outer safety. There the sail-boat already had preceded them,
and the master of the weir, having taken its place, from the dip-net was
loading his dory with massive fare of frosted silver and fusing jewel.
As Eve and her friends lingered yet a moment there, watching the
picturesque figure splashing barelegged in the shallow water, one of the
droll little craft known as Joppa-chaises came up beside them, a fulvous
face appeared at its helm, a tawny hand was extended, and they left
Luigi bargaining for fish, and stringing these simulations of massed
turquoise and scale-ruby at a penny apiece.

What little wind there was that day blew from the southeast, and
sheathed the brightness of the noonday sky in a soft veil of haze; and
having made this pretty sight their own, Eve's party spread their sail
for tacking to and fro, meaning to reach the sea. This, for some hidden
reason, the wind refused to let them do, and when it found them
obstinate brought an accomplice upon the scene, and they suddenly
surprised themselves rocking this side the bar, and caught in the vapory
fringes of a dark sea-turn, that, creeping round about, had soon so
wrapped and folded them that they could scarcely see the pennon drooping
at their mast-head. This done, the wind fell altogether, and they lay
there a part of the great bank of mist that