ring herself, I again stretched myself out on deck to snatch another
nap.

I this time slept for several hours, for when I was at length awakened
by the rustling of the sail it was close upon midnight. Starting to my
feet, I first glanced aloft and then around me; but there was nothing to
be seen, the darkness being so profound that it needed but a very small
stretch of the imagination to persuade me that it might absolutely be
felt! It was the thick, opaque darkness that I remembered having once
experienced when, as a boy, I went exploring some Devonshire caverns and
clumsily allowed my candle to fall and become extinguished in a pool of
water. It seemed to press upon me, to become palpable to the touch, to
so closely wrap me about that my very breathing became impeded. And oh,
how frightfully hot and close it was! The air was absolutely stagnant,
and the slight draught created by the uneasy motion of the felucca
seemed to positively scorch the skin. Moreover, there was no dew; the
deck-planks, the rail, everything that my hand came into contact with,
was dry and warm. I groped my way to the rail and looked abroad over
the surface of the ocean, and it will perhaps convey--at all events to
those who have used the sea--some idea of the intensity of the darkness
when I say that not the faintest glimmer of reflected light came to me
from the polished undulations of the slow-creeping swell. The water,
however, was highly phosphorescent, for alongside the felucca, and all
round her as she rolled and pitched with a quick, jerky, uneasy motion,
there extended a narrow band or cloud of faint greenish-blue sea-fire,
in the midst of which flashed and glittered millions of tiny stars,
interspersed here and there with less luminous patches, in the forms of
rings and discs, that vanished and grew into view again at quick
intervals in the most weird and uncanny manner.

I groped my way to the companion, and from thence below into the little
cabin, where I lighted the lamp and seated myself at the table, well
under its cheerful if somewhat smoky beams; for the grave-like darkness
of the deck had oppressed me with a feeling very nearly akin to horror,
and even the dull yellow light of the lamp seemed inexpressibly cheerful
in comparison with it. There was no barometer aboard the felucca, so I
had nothing to guide me to the meaning of the weather portents, but I
was convinced that something out of the common--something more tha