ee down to unknown depths through that clear sapphire medium,
breaking up here and there into pale blue reflections which are even more
enchanting than its intense tints. Fishes, apparently of gold and
rose-color or of a radiant blue barred and banded with silver, dart,
plunge and chase each other after the fragments of biscuit we throw
overboard. Films of crystal and ruby oar themselves gently along the upper
surface or float like folded sea-flowers on the motionless water. A flock
of tiny sea-mews, half the size of the fish, are screaming shrilly and
darting down on the shoal; but as for their catching them, the idea is
preposterous, for the fish are twice as big as the birds.

Still, we want to get on: we sadly want to beat another barque which
started a couple of hours after us from Natal, and we are barely drifting
a knot an hour. It is not in the least too hot. D'Urban was very sultry
when we left, but I have been shivering ever since in my holland gown,
thinking fondly and regretfully of serge skirts and a sealskin jacket down
in the hold. It may be safely taken as an axiom in travelling that you
seldom suffer from cold more than in what are supposed to be hot climates,
and the wary _voyageuse_ will never separate herself hopelessly from her
winter wraps, even when steering to tropical lands. In spite of all my
experience, I am often taken in on this point, and I should have perished
from cold during this voyage as we got farther south if it had not been
for the friendly presence of a rough Scotch plaid. Even the days were cold
on deck out of the sun, and the long nights--for darkness treads close on
the heels of sunset in the winter months of these latitudes--would have
indeed been nipping without warm wraps.

But no one thinks of wraps this balmy Easter Sunday. It is delicious as to
temperature, only we are in an ungrateful hurry, and the stars find us
scarcely a dozen miles from where they left us. I sit up to see myself
safe through the narrow passage between Flat Island and Round Island, and
fall asleep at last to the monotonous chant of so many "fathoms and no
bottom," for we take soundings every five minutes or so in this reefy
region. An apology for wind gets up at last, which takes us round the
north end of the island, and we creep up to the outer anchorage of Port
Louis, on its western shore, slowly but safely in that darkest hour before
dawn.

Bad news travels fast, they say, and some one actually too