What does this mean?  Where was “the island of the innocent”?  What was the way which the wicked, who did not live on “the island of the innocent,” had trodden, but which was swept away in the flood as the bridge Bifrost was destroyed, in the Gothic legends, by the forces of Muspelheim?

And Job replies again (chap. xxiii): 

“16.  For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me: 

“17. Because I was not cut off before the darkness, neither hath he covered the darkness from my face.”

That is to say, why did I not die before this great calamity fell on the earth, and before I saw it?

Job continues (chap. xxvi): 

“5.  Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof.

“6. Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering.

The commentators tell us that the words, “dead things are formed under the waters,” mean literally, “the souls of the dead tremble from under the waters.”

In all lands the home of the dead was, as I have shown elsewhere,[1] beyond the waters:  and just as we have seen in Ovid that Phaëton’s conflagration burst open the earth

[1.  “Atlantis,” 359, 421, etc.]

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and disturbed the inhabitants of Tartarus; and in Hesiod’s narrative that the ghosts trembled around Pluto in his dread dominion; so here hell is laid bare by the great catastrophe, and the souls of the dead in the drowned Flood-land, beneath the waters, tremble.

Surely, all these legends are fragments of one and the same great story.

“7.  He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

“8. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them.”

The clouds do not break with this unparalleled load of moisture.

“9. He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it.

“10.  He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end.

“11.  The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at his reproof.

“12.  He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud.” ("By his wisdom he has struck the proud one.”—­Douay ver.)

“13.  By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.” ("His artful hand brought forth the winding serpent.”—­Douay ver.)

What is the meaning of all this?  The dead under the waters tremble; hell is naked, in the blazing heat, and destruction is uncovered; the north, the cold, descends on the world; the waters are bound up in thick clouds; the face of God’s throne, the sun, is bidden by the clouds spread upon it; darkness has come, day and night are all one; the earth trembles; he has lighted up the heavens with the fiery comet, shaped like a crooked serpent, but he has struck him as Indra struck Vritra.