a herd of whales rushing through the livid and liquid thunder
down from the frozen zone--a hundred of them, perhaps, wallowing,
flashing, rolling in the wake of a patriarch bull, huge enough to have
been spawned before the Flood, such a creature as poor Smart had in his
mind when he said,--

'Strong against tides, the enormous whale
Emerges as he goes.'"

"I hope our bark will meet with no such shoal, or herd as you term it,
Caroline. (I suppose you fancy the sea-mammoths pasturing about the
bases of the 'everlasting hills,' devouring strange provender in the
vast valleys through and above which sea-billows roll.) I should not
like to be capsized by the patriarch bull."

"I suppose you expect to see mermaids, Shirley?"

"One of them, at any rate--I do not bargain for less--and she is to
appear in some such fashion as this. I am to be walking by myself on
deck, rather late of an August evening, watching and being watched by a
full harvest moon. Something is to rise white on the surface of the sea,
over which that moon mounts silent and hangs glorious. The object
glitters and sinks. It rises again. I think I hear it cry with an
articulate voice; I call you up from the cabin; I show you an image,
fair as alabaster, emerging from the dim wave. We both see the long
hair, the lifted and foam-white arm, the oval mirror brilliant as a
star. It glides nearer; a human face is plainly visible--a face in the
style of yours--whose straight, pure (excuse the word, it is
appropriate)--whose straight, pure lineaments paleness does not
disfigure. It looks at us, but not with your eyes. I see a preternatural
lure in its wily glance. It beckons. Were we men, we should spring at
the sign--the cold billow would be dared for the sake of the colder
enchantress; being women, we stand safe, though not dreadless. She
comprehends our unmoved gaze; she feels herself powerless; anger crosses
her front; she cannot charm, but she will appal us; she rises high, and
glides all revealed on the dark wave-ridge. Temptress-terror! monstrous
likeness of ourselves! Are you not glad, Caroline, when at last, and
with a wild shriek, she dives?"

"But, Shirley, she is not like us. We are neither temptresses, nor
terrors, nor monsters."

"Some of our kind, it is said, are all three. There are men who ascribe
to 'woman,' in general, such attributes."

"My dears," here interrupted Mrs. Pryor, "does it not strike you that
your conversation for t