"All the memories of home and Old England swelled up within me as I gazed upon the girdle of her shores. The sea! that
"——glorious mirror where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed—in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;—boundless, endless, and sublime!"
CHAPTER LII.
HARTLY'S STORY.
"When night fell, I came out of the lonely forest to gaze upon the moonlit sea—not that the forest was very lonely, after all, as there seemed to be at least fifty thousand baboons, monkeys, and squirrels, which jabbered and leaped as if they had all gone mad, the whole night, from tree to tree, and more than once the roar of a lion came hollowly from a distance, under the lower branches of the pines.
"I sat upon a piece of detached rock, and, to seek for food, dropped my fishing-line into the water. There I soon caught a fish, on which I breakfasted next day, after spreading it, split open, on the rocks, where it was half cooked by the burning sun. As for salt, there was plenty of that to be found among the crevices, where the heat had burned up the spray of the sea.
"For three nights I fished there with success and safety. On the third, I found at my line a fish of strange aspect, and, sailor-like, had some doubts about breakfasting on it, but hunger soon ends all niceties. When morning came, I sought a secluded part of the wood, and thought of lighting a little fire by rubbing dried branches together that I might broil my fish.
"Now, unless I could produce ocular proof of what I am about to say, you would laugh at me for telling you a forecastle yarn, but the proof shall not be wanting.
"While opening and cleaning the fish at a spring, previous to broiling it (an almost epicurean process to me), I found in its entrails—what? MY RING—the ring given me by old Mother Jensdochter, in Iceland, and which, as you remember, I lost a few days after we left Sermersoak, when lending a hand to haul the main-tack on board the Leda."
"Your ring!" I exclaimed; "this is like a bit of a fairy tale."