ught.

Slowly we neared the land. Flozella-a-Nina!--An omen? Was this isle,
then, to prove the last place of my search, even as it was the Last-
Verse-of-the-Song?

CHAPTER LXXXVIII
They Land

A jeweled tiara, nodding in spray, looks flowery Flozella, approached
from the sea. For, lo you! the glittering foam all round its white
marge; where, forcing themselves underneath the coral ledge, and up
through its crevices, in fountains, the blue billows gush. While,
within, zone above zone, thrice zoned in belts of bloom, all the isle,
as a hanging-garden soars; its tapering cone blending aloft, with
heaven's own blue.

"What flies through the spray! what incense is this?" cried Media.

"Ha! you wild breeze! you have been plundering the gardens of Hautia,"
cried Yoomy.

"No sweets can be sweeter," said Braid-Beard, "but no Upas more deadly."

Anon we came nearer; sails idly flapping, and paddles suspended; sleek
currents our coursers. And round about the isle, like winged rainbows,
shoals of dolphins were leaping over floating fragments of wrecks:--
dark-green, long-haired ribs, and keels of canoes. For many shallops,
inveigled by the eddies, were oft dashed to pieces against that
flowery strand. But what cared the dolphins? Mardian wrecks were their
homes. Over and over they sprang: from east to west: rising and
setting: many suns in a moment; while all the sea, like a harvest
plain, was stacked with their glittering sheaves of spray.

And far down, fathoms on fathoms, flitted rainbow hues:--as seines-
full of mermaids; half-screening the bones of the drowned.

Swifter and swifter the currents now ran; till with a shock, our prows
were beached.

There, beneath an arch of spray, three dark-eyed maidens stood;
garlanded with columbines, their nectaries nodding like jesters'
bells; and robed in vestments blue.

"The pilot-fish transformed!" cried Yoomy.

"The night-eyed heralds three!" said Mohi.

Following the maidens, we now took our way along a winding vale;
where, by sweet-scented hedges, flowed blue-braided brooks; their
tributaries, rivulets of violets, meandering through the meads.

On one hand, forever glowed the rosy mountains with a tropic dawn; and
on the other; lay an Arctic eve;--the white daisies drifted in long
banks of snow, and snowed the blossoms from the orange boughs. There,
summer breathed her bridal bloom; her hill-top temples crowned with
bridal wreaths.

We wandered on, through