sails set, gliding over what seemed to be a placid ocean, for
beneath the ship was the reflection of it.

[Illustration]

The news soon spread through the vessel that a phantom-ship with a
ghostly crew was sailing in the air over a phantom-ocean, and that it
was a bad omen, and meant that not one of them should ever see land
again. The captain was told the wonderful tale, and coming on deck, he
explained to the sailors that this strange appearance was caused by
the reflection of some ship that was sailing on the water below this
image, but at such a distance they could not see it. There were
certain conditions of the atmosphere, he said, when the sun's rays
could form a perfect picture in the air of objects on the earth, like
the images one sees in glass or water, but they were not generally
upright, as in the case of this ship, but reversed--turned bottom
upwards. This appearance in the air is called a mirage. He told a
sailor to go up to the foretop and look beyond the phantom-ship. The
man obeyed, and reported that he could see on the water, below the
ship in the air, one precisely like it. Just then another ship was
seen in the air, only this one was a steamship, and was
bottom-upwards, as the captain had said these mirages generally
appeared. Soon after, the steamship itself came in sight. The sailors
were now convinced, and never afterwards believed in phantom-ships.

A French army marching across the burning sands of an Egyptian desert,
fainting with thirst and choked with fine sand, were suddenly revived
in spirit by the sight of a sheet of water in the distance. In it were
mirrored the trees and villages, gardens and pretty houses of a
cultivated land, all reversed. The blue sky was mirrored there, too,
just as you can see the banks of a lake, and the sky that bends over
it, in its calm waters. The soldiers rushed towards the place, frantic
with joy, but when they got there they found nothing but the hot
sands. Again they saw the lake at a distance, and made another
headlong rush, only to be again disappointed. This happened
frequently, until the men were in despair, and imagined that some
demon was tormenting them. But there happened to be with this army a
wise man, who did not trust entirely to his own eyes, and although he
saw exactly what the others did, he did not believe that there was
anything there but air. He set to work to investigate it, and found
out that the whole thing was an illusion--it was