hich the old negro woman
held enforced guard over the insensible form of Ada Greene, and, still
clasping the poor helpless one, so mysteriously thrust upon my tender
mercies, to my bosom, I gained the edge of the raft, unnoticed by
Christian Garth, who might otherwise have apprehended me in turn, and
borne me back to my allotted precincts, and hung above the ocean, so as
to suffer its cooling spray to fall unceasingly across my burning
forehead.

From some instinctive prompting I had lashed the poor, frail baby to my
girdle with the scarf of knotted silk I wore about my neck, and, wan
and exhausted, he lay upon my shoulder tranquilly as any Indian papoose
might do on its mother's breast. A branch of sea-weed floated past as I
looked down--some gracious mermaid's gift, perhaps, extended by her
invisible fingers to greet our famishing lips--and I caught it eagerly,
dividing the welcome nutriment with the perishing child, now patient
from weakness and instinctive consciousness, perhaps, of the entire
uselessness of cries and tears.

Whether the weed was a sort of ocean-hasheesh, or wholesome aliment, I
never knew, but certain it is that, from the moment its juices passed my
lips, a strange and delightful quietude stole over my weary senses, fast
lapsing, as these had seemed, into, unconsciousness when I left my place
to seek the ocean's brink.

The rays of the declining sun seemed for a moment centred on one spot,
immediately before my impending face, supported as this was on one hand,
and my sight followed their lance-like rays to the very floor of ocean!

As the waters of the Red Sea divided for the passage of Moses and the
Israelites, so seemed these to part for my mental eyes, sundered as they
were by a golden sword of infinite splendor.

That power which neither pain nor peril can subdue had possession of me
now, and, above all, the bitter circumstances that surrounded me, and,
in the face of danger and of death, imagination asserted her supremacy.
My dream was not of passing ship or harbor gained, or rich repast, or
festival, or clustered grapes and sparkling wines, like other sufferers
from shipwreck, fevered with famine, frenzied with despair; but hasheesh
or opium never bestowed so fair, so strange a vision as that which, in
my extremity, was mercifully accorded to me.

My eyes pursued the sea-shaft to its base, as a telescope conducts the
mortal gaze to revel in the stars. Merman and mermaid, nereid and
tr