All is darkness again. I am awake!
Once more the kaleidoscope of my dream changed.
I am now floating in a battered boat, without either sails or oars, on the boundless waters of the ocean. I can hear the lap, lapping of the sobbing sea against the sides of my frail craft; and the ripple of the current, hurrying along in its devious course the boat, which is as powerless to resist its influence as a straw upon the stream.
Presently the current spins onward faster and more furiously. I see the faint outlines of purple hills breaking the vacant curve of the horizon. A delicious fragrance from tropic flowers fills the air—the perfumes of the jessamine, the magnolia, the cereus. A sweet, delicious languor creeps over me. I feel a vague sense of rest and happiness, which, to my onlooking self, seems almost unaccountable; for, there am I, still all alone on the ocean, swept onward towards the purple hills in the distance, over the smooth-flowing surface of azure liquid, while, not a sound is to be heard, save the restless murmuring of the many-voiced sea.
The boat glides on.
Now I find myself encircled by radiant groups of picturesque coral islands, all covered with palm-trees, whose waving branches are entwined with varied-hued passion-flowers. Lilies and ferns, narcissi and irises, are intermingled in one chaos of beauty, skirting the velvet sward that runs down to the water’s edge.
On each tiny islet, the lavish wealth of nature, freely outpoured, seemed to make it a perfect paradise. Brilliantly-plumaged birds flitted here and there, their colours contrasting with the green foliage. Gauzy-winged insects buzzed to and fro. The notes of the nightingale, or some kindred songster, could be heard, singing an ecstatic soprano to the cooing bass of the dove and the rippling obbligato of babbling brooks—that filtered through golden-yellow sands into the lap of the mother of waters—amid the sympathetic harmony of gushing cascades, whose noisy cadence was toned down by distance to a melodious hum.
And now I find that I am alone no longer.
I see Min stepping forward to greet me, advancing down the sloping turf-bank of the first island I reach; but, I cannot land. I cannot touch her hand.
No. The current sweeps my boat onward, past each tiny paradise in turn; and, on each, I still see Min always coming towards me, yet never reaching me! Swiftly the boat glides, swiftly and more swift; until, at last, Min, the palm-tree-shaded coral islets and all, are lost to sight—gradually yet in a moment.