Vain phantoms all! the stately señora, the garrulous old steward, Joseffa herself—the sea entombs them all! The crooked coin I gave my love lies deep with her in caves which no line hath ever plumbed. The ocean is the most inscrutable of sepulchres. I know not, and no man knows, the place of their resting. The breeze was fair, and the sea smooth, which bore from Carthagena the ship in which they embarked to return to Spain. She was a stately merchantman, and as she left the port cannon thundered and church bells clashed from echoing steeples. Then spreading her fair white wings to the wind, and towering in her pride over the fleet of small craft which joyously, with shout and blessing, convoyed her out to sea—the good ship disappeared, holding her steady course for home. Since that day, no man has seen her or aught of her. No token of the ill-starred craft has been driven on any coast, or picked up on any sea; no bottle or flask, carrying a despairing message from dying to living men, has floated to any human hand. The fierce fire may have seized on her—the starting of a plank may have brought on the fatal leak. A sudden tornado may have crushed her under the howling waters. Beaten and belaboured by a long-blowing gale, she may at length have succumbed to the force of roaring winds and seas. God only knows her fate. She never came to land. She joined that mighty navy which rests, manned by bleaching bones, far down beneath those good keepers of secrets—the waves and swells of the ocean; those waves on which gallant fleets and living men ride buoyantly, joyously, all unwitting and unthinking that, mayhap, a mile below the keel, rise the topmasts of what was once a merrily bounding ship, now peeping forth amid the green branches and slowly waving boughs of those great forests which learned men say grow at the bottom of the sea.