“An escort of ‘thrashers,’ or grampuses, accompanied me.  The Seer-King would have detached a cohort of white whales, but the animosity of my tribes might have provoked combat.  I left the cetacea with some foreboding.  They were allied in some degree to man; they were capable of some human impressions; their blood was warm like mine; they breathed with lungs; they had double hearts; and nourished kindness for their offspring.  But I was now about to be delivered over to the cold, cruel, gluttonous tribes of the fish.  The family of sharks received me.  They could not be counted for multitude.  The terrible requiem of the storm—­the cannibal white shark—­welcomed me with open jaws; the blue shark flung up his caudal for joy; the fox-shark lashed the sea; the northern shark glared through his purblind orbs; the hammer-head dilated his yellow irides; the purple dog-fish made a low purring huzza; and the spotted eyes of the monk-fish glistened with satisfaction.  The hound-shark, the basking-shark, and the port-beagle were not less loyal; and these, the most perfectly organized of my cartilaginous tribes, handed me over to the deep-swimming Norwegian ‘sea-rat.’  Thus I kept steadily southward, the water growing warmer hour by hour, now riding on the serrated snouts of saw-fishes, now moving in the midst of battalions of sword-fish, now acknowledged by the great pike, now vaulting above the surface on the backs of flying-fish, now clinging to the spines of sturgeons, now passing through illimitable shoals of cod, now borne by the swift sea-salmon, now dazzled by the golden scales of the carp, now passing over miles of flat-fish, now hailed by monster conger-eels, now swimming down files of leering hippocampuses, now received by congregations of staid aldermanic lobsters.  The torpedo telegraphed my coming to the tribes before, and at last I reached my abode, on the line of the equator, in mid-Atlantic.

“The magnitude and beauty of my court no mind can realize.  A truncated cone of granitic rock, whose base extended to the profoundest depths of the sea—­even to the region of perpetual fire—­formed with its upper plane a circular lagoon at the surface of the ocean.  Geysers or volcanoes of fresh water gurgled up through the centre of this palace, and vast submarine groves, intermixed with meadows, extended for leagues along its sides.  My household consisted entirely of silver and golden carp, but my guards were of the loyal and gentle, yet courageous and powerful xiphias (sword-fish).  These barred the unlicensed ingress of my subjects, and if the adventurous foot of man should profane my lagoon, I could close its inlet and cover it with floods.  The dim aisles of the waters were full of wonderful lights:  combinations of colors, unknown above, were here developed in gigantic fuci, around whose boles the scarlet tangle climbed, and parasites of purple and emerald played upon their rinds.  Some of these forests pointed upward toward the sun; some grew downward,