Two hours later the tempest had passed, drifting to the west, over the wooded heights. It was five in the evening and the declining sun was nearing the last low-lying patches of cloud. The light, penetrating through the exuberant vegetation, colored everything with a marvelous variety of hues, which melted into a glow of gold and emerald. To the east an infinite sheet of verdure extended itself, following all the folds and irregularities of the mountain mass, flecked here and there with the delicate and brilliant green of banana patches, and undulating over that stairway of giants, became blue with distance and broke like a sea against the broad strip of sand of the Vera Cruz coast. The road which we had followed in our ascent, wound like a serpent among trees, which scarcely distinguished their foliage masses amid the dense curtain of vines and creepers, passed over a lofty bridge, descended in broad curves to a little settlement of wooden buildings, and went, between dense and tangled patches of briers, to confound itself with the bit of railroad which led from the foot of the mountain to the port. At the bottom of the picture, there, where the sea was imagined, were rising superb cloud masses against whose blue-gray ground were defined the black and immovable streaks of stratus, seeming a flock of seabirds opening their enormous wings to the wind, which delayed its blowing. The German slept as one much fatigued and from his panting bosom issued heavy sobs; he seemed afflicted with intense suffering; a suspicion crossed my mind; if he should----! The branches of a neighboring tree projected, through an open window, into the _diligencia_, which was standing still, until the torrents should have spent something of their force. Upon a yellowed leaf trembled a raindrop, the last tear of the tempest. Preoccupied by the dismal fear which the condition of my companion caused me, I looked attentively at that bead of crystal liquid. This is what I saw: The drop of water was the Gulf of Mexico, bordered by the immense curve of hot coast and cut off, on the east, by two low breakwaters, crusted with flowers and palms,--Florida and Yucatan, between which, in flight, extended a long string of seabirds, the Antilles, headed by the royal heron, Cuba, slave served by slaves. In the midst of the Gulf, surmounted by a yellow crown, which gilded the sea around like an enormous sunflower which reflects itself in a flower of water, arose a barren island of the color of impure gold, where currents deposited the seaweeds like the wrappings which swathe Egyptian mummies. Above that rocky mass the sun gleamed like copper, the rapid moon passed veiled by livid vapors, and on days of tempest the storm-birds described wide circles around it, uttering direful croakings. A voice, infinitely sad, like the voice of the sea, sounded in that lost island; listen, it said to me.