This sea was a marvel. Since all the water hazards above described
emptied into it, it was little more than a huge expanse of punch, one
swallow of which, thanks to these ingredients and the sugar and nutmeg
from the bunkers, would make a man forget an eternity of troubles
until he woke up again, if he ever did. Here Jupiter sported every
variety of pleasure craft, and, by an ingenious system of funnels
arranged about its sixty-square-mile area, could at a moment's notice
produce any variety of breeze he chanced to wish; and its submarine
bottom was so designed that if a heavy sea were wanted to make the
yacht pitch and toss, a simple mechanical device would cause it to
hump itself into such corrugations, large or small, as were needed to
bring about the desired conditions.
"Do they allow bathing in that?" I asked, as the Major Domo explained
the peculiar feature of this in-door sea to me.
My companion laughed. "Only one person ever tried it with any degree
of success, and it nearly cost him his reputation. Old Bacchus
undertook to swim on a wager from Chambertin Inlet to Glenlivet Bay,
but he had to give up before he got as far as Pommery Point. It took
him a year to get rid of his headache, and it actually required
three-quarters of the Treasury Reserve to provide gold enough to cure
him."
"It must be a terrible place to fall overboard in," I suggested.
"It is, if you fall head first," said the Major Domo, "and my
observation is that most people do."
"I should admire to sail upon it," I said, gazing back through the
door that opened upon Jupiter's yachting parlors, and realizing on a
sudden a powerful sense of thirst.
"I have no doubt you can do so," said the Major Domo. "Indeed, I
understand that his Majesty contemplates taking you for a sail to the
lost island of Atlantis before you return to earth."
"What?" I cried. "The lost island of Atlantis here?"
"Of course," said my guide. "Why not? It was too beautiful for earth,
so Jupiter had it transported to his own private yachting pond, and it
has been here ever since. It is marvellously beautiful."
Hardly had I recovered from my amazement over the Major Domo's
announcement when he pointed to another open door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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