Lying in motionless ecstasy on the buoyant element he watched the mists of morning as they soared into the air.  Reluctantly, with imperceptible movement, they detached themselves from their watery home; they clambered aloft in spectral companies, drawn skyward, as by some beckoning hand, under the stealthy compulsion of the sun.  They crept against the tawny precipices, clinging to their pinnacles like shreds of pallid gauze, and nestling demurely among dank clefts where something of the mystery of night still lingered.  It was a procession of dainty shapes wreathing themselves into gracious attitudes; mounting—­ever mounting.  As he beheld their filmy draperies that swayed phantom-like among the crags overhead, he understood those pagan minds of olden days for whom such wavering exhalations were none other than sea-nymphs, Atlantides, offspring of some mild-eyed god of Ocean rising to greet their playfellows, the Oreads, on the hills.

The wildest stretch of Nepenthe coast-line lay before him.  Its profile suggested not so much the operation of terrestrial forces as a convulses and calcined lunar landscape—­the handiwork of some demon in delirium.  Gazing landwards, nothing met his eye save jagged precipices of fearful height, tormented rifts and gulleys scorched by fires of old into fantastic shapes, and descending confusedly to where the water slept in monster-haunted caverns.

Not a sign of humanity was visible save one white villa, far away.  It was perched on a promontory of heliotrope-tinted trachyte; struck by the morning beams it flashed and glowed like a jewel in the sunshine.  He knew the place:  Madame Steynlin’s abode.  The sight of it reminded him of a promise to attend her picnic next week; all Nepenthe would be invited, after the feast of Saint Eulalia.  And hard by the shore, at its foot, he discerned certain minute scarlet specks.

What could they be?

Why, of course!  They were recognizable, even at this distance, as the blouses of the Sacred Sixty-three, who frequented this somewhat public spot for bathing purposes, blandly indifferent, or resigned, to the gaze of inquisitive onlookers.  Mr. Heard, among others, had witnessed their aquatic diversions.

The Messiah was hindered by age and growing infirmities from taking part in the proceedings; moreover, he had been sickening lately, it was said, for some new Revelation—­a Revelation of which the island was to become cognizant that very morning.  But others of the Muscovite band were fond of congregating at this spot and hour for their lustral summer rites—­white-skinned lads and lasses, matrons and reverent elders, all in a state of Adamitic nudity, splashing about the water of this sunny cover, devouring raw fish and crabs after the manner of the fabled Ichthyophagi, laughing, kissing, saying nice things about God, and combing out each other’s long tow-coloured hair.  Madame Steynlin, a spectator by necessity if not deliberate