ing just as if it were out in the open air--bushes and vines
and hedges; all sorts of tender waving plants, all made of seaweed and
coral, growing in the white sand; and instead of birds flying about
among their branches there were little fishes of every color:
canary-colored fishes, fishes like robin-redbreasts, and others which
you might have thought were blue jays if they had been up in the air
instead of down in the water."

"Where did you say all this is to be seen?" asked the Daughter of the
House, who loved all lovely things.

"Oh, in a good many places in warm climates," said John. "But, now I
come to think of it, there was one place where I saw more beautiful
sights, more grand and wonderful sights, under the water than I believe
anybody ever saw before! Would you like me to tell you about it?"

"Indeed--I--would!" said she, taking off her hat.

John now began to sharpen the end of his pea-stick. "It was a good many
years ago," said he, "more than twenty--and I was then a seafaring man.
I was on board a brig, cruising in the West Indies, and we were off
Porto Rico, about twenty miles northward, I should say, when we ran into
something in the night,--we never could find out what it was,--and we
stove a big hole in that brig which soon began to let in a good deal
more water than we could pump out. The captain he was a man that knew
all about that part of the world, and he told us all that we must work
as hard as we could at the pumps, and if we could keep her afloat until
he could run her ashore on a little sandy island he knew of not far from
St. Thomas, we might be saved. There was a fresh breeze from the west,
and he thought he could make the island before we sank.

"I was mighty glad to hear him say this, for I had always been nervous
when I was cruising off Porto Rico. Do you know, miss, that those waters
are the very deepest in the whole world?"

"No," said she; "I never heard that."

"Well, they are," said John. "If you should take the very tallest
mountain there is in any part of the earth and put it down north of
Porto Rico, so that the bottom of it shall rest on the bottom of the
sea, the top of that mountain would be sunk clean out of sight, so that
ships could sail over it just as safely as they sail in any part of the
ocean.

"Of course a man would drown just as easily in a couple of fathoms of
water as in this deep place; but it is perfectly horrible to think of
sinking down, down, down int