horizon; like a vast serpent with ten thousand
folds coiled all round the globe; yet so nigh, apparently, that it
seemed as if one's hand might touch it.

What loneliness; when the sun rose, and spurred up the heavens, we
hailed him as a wayfarer in Sahara the sight of a distant horseman.
Save ourselves, the sun and the Chamois seemed all that was left of
life in the universe. We yearned toward its jocund disk, as in
strange lands the traveler joyfully greets a face from home, which
there had passed unheeded. And was not the sun a fellow-voyager? were
we not both wending westward? But how soon he daily overtook and
passed us; hurrying to his journey's end.

When a week had gone by, sailing steadily on, by day and by night, and
nothing in sight but this self-same sea, what wonder if disquieting
thoughts at last entered our hearts? If unknowingly we should pass
the spot where, according to our reckoning, our islands lay, upon what
shoreless sea would we launch? At times, these forebodings bewildered
my idea of the positions of the groups beyond. All became vague and
confused; so that westward of the Kingsmil isles and the Radack chain,
I fancied there could be naught but an endless sea.

CHAPTER XIII
Of The Chondropterygii, And Other Uncouth Hordes Infesting The South Seas

At intervals in our lonely voyage, there were sights which
diversified the scene; especially when the constellation Pisces was
in the ascendant.

It's famous botanizing, they say, in Arkansas' boundless prairies; I
commend the student of Ichthyology to an open boat, and the ocean
moors of the Pacific. As your craft glides along, what strange
monsters float by. Elsewhere, was never seen their like. And nowhere
are they found in the books of the naturalists.

Though America be discovered, the Cathays of the deep are unknown.
And whoso crosses the Pacific might have read lessons to Buffon. The
sea-serpent is not a fable; and in the sea, that snake is but a
garden worm. There are more wonders than the wonders rejected, and
more sights unrevealed than you or I ever ever dreamt of. Moles and
bats alone should be skeptics; and the only true infidelity is for a
live man to vote himself dead. Be Sir Thomas Brown our ensample; who,
while exploding "Vulgar Errors," heartily hugged all the mysteries in
the Pentateuch.

But look! fathoms down in the sea; where ever saw you a phantom like
that? An enormous crescent with antlers like a reindeer, and a