But, lingering not long in those silent vales, from watery cliff to cliff, a sea-chamois, sprang our solitary craft,—­a goat among the Alps!

How undulated the 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 Delta of mouths.  Slowly it sinks, and is seen no more.

Doctor Faust saw the devil; but you have seen the “Devil Fish.”

Look again!  Here comes another.  Jarl calls it a Bone Shark.  Full as large as a whale, it is spotted like a leopard; and tusk-like teeth overlap its jaws like those of the walrus.  To seamen, nothing strikes more terror than the near vicinity of a creature like this.  Great ships steer out of its path.  And well they may; since the good craft Essex, and others, have been sunk by sea-monsters, as the alligator thrusts his horny snout through a Carribean canoe.