That queen had first incited Mardi to wage war against the beings with wings.  She it was, who had been foremost in every assault.  And that queen was ancestor of Hautia, now ruling the isle.

Approaching the dominions of one who so long had haunted me, conflicting emotions tore up my soul in tornadoes.  Yet Hautia had held out some prospect of crowning my yearnings.  But how connected were Hautia and Yillah?  Something I hoped; yet more I feared.  Dire presentiments, like poisoned arrows, shot through me.  Had they pierced me before, straight to Flozella would I have voyaged; not waiting for Hautia to woo me by that last and victorious temptation.  But unchanged remained my feelings of hatred for Hautia; yet vague those feelings, as the language of her flowers.  Nevertheless, in some mysterious way seemed Hautia and Yillah connected.  But Yillah was all beauty, and innocence; my crown of felicity; my heaven below;—­and Hautia, my whole heart abhorred.  Yillah I sought; Hautia sought me.  One, openly beckoned me here; the other dimly allured me there.  Yet now was I wildly dreaming to find them together.  But so distracted my soul, I knew not what it was, that I thought.

Slowly we neared the land.  Flozella-a-Nina!—­An omen?  Was this isle, then, to prove the last place of my search, even as it was the Last-Verse-of-the-Song?

CHAPTER LXXXVIII They Land

A jeweled tiara, nodding in spray, looks flowery Flozella, approached from the sea.  For, lo you! the glittering foam all round its white marge; where, forcing themselves underneath the coral ledge, and up through its crevices, in fountains, the blue billows gush.  While, within, zone above zone, thrice zoned in belts of bloom, all the isle, as a hanging-garden soars; its tapering cone blending aloft, with heaven’s own blue.

“What flies through the spray! what incense is this?” cried Media.

“Ha! you wild breeze! you have been plundering the gardens of Hautia,” cried Yoomy.

“No sweets can be sweeter,” said Braid-Beard, “but no Upas more deadly.”

Anon we came nearer; sails idly flapping, and paddles suspended; sleek currents our coursers.  And round about the isle, like winged rainbows, shoals of dolphins were leaping over floating fragments of wrecks:—­ dark-green, long-haired ribs, and keels of canoes.  For many shallops, inveigled by the eddies, were oft dashed to pieces against that flowery strand.  But what cared the dolphins?  Mardian wrecks were their homes.  Over and over they sprang:  from east to west:  rising and setting:  many suns in a moment; while all the sea, like a harvest plain, was stacked with their glittering sheaves of spray.

And far down, fathoms on fathoms, flitted rainbow hues:—­as seines-full of mermaids; half-screening the bones of the drowned.

Swifter and swifter the currents now ran; till with a shock, our prows were beached.