| arose and the waves seemed ready to swallow us, as we looked shuddering down into the very bottom of the sea; at other times, we lay becalmed, our food all gone, and we barely able to eke out our lives on the poor shell-fish found on barren shores; sometimes, smitten with loathsome disease we writhed in agony, the very heavens shutting us out from all mercy; often, horrible demons rising from the waves climbed with slimy coil upon the ship, ready to devour us.
On the five hundredth day, while drifting on an unknown sea, at the hour of the dragon, I saw, far off upon the horizon, a hugh mass which proved to be a beautiful floating mountain.
We approached and sailed around it for three days, trying to find a place to land, at last, when drawing close to the shore |
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in a sheltered cove, I saw a woman catching the limpid water from a tiny rill in her silver bucket, who was so surpassingly beautiful in her glistening robes, that I thought she surely must be an angel.
When, in reply to my eager question, she told me the mountain was called Horai, I could scarce restrain my joy to ask her own name; she murmured some softly musical word and vanished, and I never saw her more.
“All around were shrubs and trees laden with flowers such as bloom only in the stars.
the streams which broke in laughing cascades of diamonds over the glittering rocks were of red-gold, pure silver, or bright azure waters, and were spanned with fairy bridges of precious stones of all the colors of the rainbow.
Among the trees which sparkled |
