University of Virginia Library

IX.

THEN only the enormous double-vision of sky and sea.

The sky: a cupola of blinding blue, shading down and paling into spectral green at the rim of the world,—and all fleckless, save at evening. Then, with sunset, comes a light gold-drift of little feathery cloudlets into the West,—stippling it as with a snow of fire.

The sea: no flower-tint may now make my comparison for the splendor of its lucent color. It has shifted its hue;—for we have entered into the Azure Stream: it has more than the magnificence of burning cyanogen. …

But, at night, the Cross of the South appears no more. And other changes come, as day succeeds to day,—a lengthening of the hours of light, a longer lingering of the after-glow,—a cooling of the wind. Each morning the air seems a little cooler, a little rarer;—each noon the sky looks a little paler, a little further away—always heightening, yet also more shadowy, as if its

color, receding, were dimmed by distance,—were coming more faintly down from vaster altitudes.

… Mademoiselle is petted like a child by the lady passengers. And every man seems anxious to aid in making her voyage a pleasant one. For much of which, I think, she may thank her eyes!