I was prepared to witness a rich and gorgeous show, but what I now viewed went leagues beyond any imagination I could have conceived of the reality. The ancient fabric had four decks, that is to say, the forecastle, the main-deck that was like a well, a short raised quarter-deck, and abaft all a poop, going to the narrow, castle-like crown of the head of the stern. These decks, together with the inside of the bulwarks, were thickly encrusted with shells of every imaginable hue and shape and size; but in addition there flourished densely amongst these shells a wonderful surface of marine growths, not so dense but that the shells could be seen between, yet plentiful enough to submit each deck to the eye as a glorious marine parterre. It was like entering upon a scene of fairyland; there were growths of a coralline appearance of many colours, from a Tyrian dye to a delicate opalescent azure, huge bulbs like bloated cucumbers, flowers resembling immense daisies, with coral-hard spikes projecting from them like the rays which dart from the sun; long trailing plants like prostrate creepers, others erect, as tall as my knee, resembling ferns, of a grace beyond all expression, with their plume-like archings, blossoms of white and carnation, green bayonet-like spikes, weeds shaped to the aspect of purple lizards so that one watched to see if they crawled; great round vegetables bigger than the African toad-stools, some crimson, some of cream colour, some barred with crimson on a yellow ground; here and there lay fish big and little, of shapes I had never before beheld, whose vividness seemed to have lost nothing through their being dead. Against the front of the quarterdeck was the livid body of a porpoise. There was scarcely a vegetable growth but that might have been wrought of steel for the unyieldingness of it. I kicked at one toadstool-like thing and my foot recoiled as though it had smote a little pillar of iron. The picture was made the more amazing by the red light of the declining sun, for every white gleam had its tinge of ruby, and what was deep of hue glowed gloriously rich. The two shafts of masts sparkled like the jewelled fingers of a woman. And the deep sea smell! The atmosphere was charged with an odour of brine and weed of a pungency and quality that one felt to be possible only to a revelation from some deepest and most secret recess of the deep. The water that had covered the main-deck when Dowling and Cutbill had first inspected the craft was fast draining away, but the growths there and the shells were still soaked and gave a wet surface for the light of the sun to flash up in, and the whole space sparkled with the glory of the rainbow, but so much brighter than the brightest rainbow, that the eye, after lingering, came away weeping with the dazzle. CHAPTER XXXI. THE FIRST NIGHT.