“I devoted a fourth year to perfecting my system of organic communication, and made some advance toward developing life in inorganic matter.  From this latter attainment it would be but a step to perpetuate life, and I should thus restore immortality to man.  But the shark family having threatened to revolt, I left off my investigations for some months, and organized a military force, with which I massacred the malcontents till my subjects swam in blood.  Returning victoriously at the head of my legions, a sad incident occurred.  A ship was crossing our line of march, and I had an unaccountable curiosity to hear something of terrestrial affairs.  Five sawfish, at my bidding, staved in the ship’s bottom, and she sank almost instantly.  The corpses of the drowned drifted slowly down, and as I passed among them, turning up the faces, I recognized in one the features of my mother!

“After a season of remorse I continued my investigations, but a novel and unexpected discovery deranged my plans, and wrought a change in my destiny.

“The subtlest forms of matter, as commonly known, are the imponderables—­light, heat, magnetism, and electricity.  I had concluded that these were manifestations of some still subtler form, and that this was life, beyond which lay the ethereal elements (called principles) of mind and soul—­soul being ultimate and eternal.  To demonstrate this I resolved to descend as far as possible into the depths of the sea, and examine the beings which dwelt in the remotest darkness.  The conical shape of my island allowed me to descend within its shelving interior, and yet sustain no great atmospheric pressure.  I selected a sturgeon, whose body was so powerfully plated that he could not be crushed, and his long-pointed shape gave him great facility for penetrating dense waters.  I attached a phosphorescent light to his caudal, that I might not lose him in the gloom, and he preceded me along the sloping interior.  We passed the foundations of my court, bade adieu to the deep-swimming hydras, left the profoundest polypi behind, and came at length to uninhabited regions, three thousand fathoms below the surface.  My pioneer here suffered great inconvenience, and only by the most vigorous efforts was able to progress at all.  The blackness was literally tangible, and our lantern, at most, only ‘darkness visible.’  By threat and persuasion I forced him forward, hardly able to make headway myself.  He swept the almost solid element with his powerful tail, depressed his sharp snout, sucked a long breath, and we darted forward simultaneously.  There was a cracking as of bones forced together, and my cranium seemed to split.  We shot out of the density into lighter water, and the momentum carried us fifty fathoms beyond!

“We had passed out of the limit of solar attraction, and were being drawn toward the centre of the earth!

“Before, we had been descending; now, we were rising.  The fluid grew rarer and warmer as we proceeded, the darkness more luminous, and at last we became visible to each other, swimming in a ruby and transparent liquid, unlike any aspect or part of our native domain.  The fluid became so rare finally, that the sturgeon was unable to go farther, kept down by his superior gravity.  Some lights glimmering above us, and some mysterious sounds alarming him, he turned and fled.  I was left alone.