This and like yarns ran in my head, and indeed the more I thought of it the more I seemed to fancy that this head of pumice upon which the galleon was seated was of the right sort to crumble down flat all in a minute. Why, think of the height of it! Since those times I believe the plummet has sounded the depths of that part of the equinoctial waters, but in those days the ocean there was held unsearchable. Was it all lava that had been spewed up? some mountain of volcanic vomit, hardened by the brine into an altitude of many thousands of feet from ooze to summit; and hollow as a drum, too, with a mere film of crust on top? Oh God! I mused, wrung from head to foot with a shudder; think of this crust yielding, letting the galleon sink miles down the gigantic shaft of porous stuff, the walls on top yet standing above the water-line, high enough to prevent the sea from rolling into the titanic funnel! Gracious love! figure our being alive when we got to the bottom, and looking up at the mere star of daylight that stared down upon us from the vast distance as the galleon grounded on a bottom deeper than the seat of the hell of the mediæval terrorists! I shook my head; such a fancy was like to drive me mad--with the sort of possibility of it, too, in its way. Could I have but stirred my stumps I might have been able to walk off something of my mood of horror, but every pace along that deck was like wading and floundering. I went to the high forecastle rail and leaned my arms upon it and looked into the night, and presently the beauty and the serenity and the wide mystery of the dark ocean brimming to the wheeling stars worked in me with the influence of a benediction; my pulse slackened and I grew calm. What could the worst that befel us signify but death? I reflected; and I thought of my cousin sleeping in the black void yonder. The splashing of the water streaming from the holes in the side sounded refreshingly upon the ears. There was a suggestion as of caressing in the tender noise of the dark fingers of the sea blindly and softly pawing the incline of the beach. The atmosphere was hot, but the edge of its fever was blunted by the dew. Thus passed the time, and when I thought my hour and a half had gone I stepped quietly over to Finn and shook him, and with a sailor’s promptitude he sprang to his feet, understanding, dead as his slumber had been, our situation and arrangements the instant he opened his eyes. My mind was full, nor was I yet sleepy, and I could have talked long with him on the thoughts which had visited me. But to what purpose? There was nothing that he could have suggested. Like others in desperate straits our business was to wait and hope and help ourselves as best we could. I took a peep at Laura before lying down; she lay motionless, sound asleep, breathing regularly. Lady Monson stirred as I was in the act of withdrawing, and laughed low and so oddly that I knew it was a dreamer’s mirth. CHAPTER XXXII.