a deep sigh, and, glancing at my
lower extremities, burst into a fresh flood of tears. I was unable to
account for these weeping fits, to which she seemed subject.

"Some female caprice," thought I; "nothing more."

"What ails thee, my beloved?" I said, tenderly. "Say why, O bewitching
enchantress, do those pearl drops continue to pay their tiny tribute to
the great ocean?"

"Oh!" she cried to herself, clasping her hands and looking upward, "I
feel the sacrifice is _too_ great. It will cost him dearly; but has he
not promised?"

"Promised!" I muttered. "What is this sacrifice, I wonder, that she
requires of me? What can it be but always to live with her in her own
home, under the sea. When once my soul is united with hers," I reasoned,
"we shall be one being. I shall be able to live under the water as well
as on _terra firma_. And what have I to make me wish to return to land?
I am a widower without family. I've no fortune, in fact, I am all but a
ruined man, and I feel anxious to begin a new phase of existence. The
sacrifice, after all, is not so great. What does it matter to me where I
live, as long as I can bask the livelong day in the sunshine of such
beauty?"

I felt that that long ambrosial kiss, the intensity of which had so
exhausted my beloved, had imparted to me a new life. I no longer dreaded
or believed in the possibility of being drowned. I felt an intense
desire to behold the wonders of the deep, and visit those palaces of
coral and mother-of-pearl that I had so often heard of, so seizing my
beloved by the waist, I exclaimed,

"Come, O joy of my soul; lead me to the hall of thy father. Let us
plunge into the turbulent billows. I thirst for thy element. I feel
irresistibly drawn down by some new power that has come over me."

"Follow me, then, my beloved," she said, and with one splash disappeared
beneath the waves.

To kick away my grog cask and plunge in after her was the work of a
moment. I dived down, down, down, till I caught up my charmer, and we
both dived together side by side. Down, down, down, deeper, deeper, and
deeper, still we dived through forests of seaweed, startling away all
sorts of curiously formed fish and sea monsters in our rapid course.

I thought I should never get to the bottom. At length, after long
continued diving, I thought I descried gleaming through the waters, the
mother-of-pearl roofs and pinnacles of various edifices; nor was I
deceived, for as I dived deeper, I